L'viv!

Oh my, I have been a bad blogger. :P Sorry everyone. I guess since we just went straight into school after our trip I just got right back into the routine without talking about what we did in L’viv. So now (before we’re back from the Eurotour with MORE stuff to say) I will update you a little. Basically, in short, L’viv is awesome! It’s beautiful. It has amazing architecture and cobblestone streets, very different from Kiev. What I picture Kiev as is a bunch of identical apartment buildings. Although to be fair to our home ground, that impression comes from where we live, in the suburbs if you will. I guess downtown isn’t like that, but I don’t know that part of Kiev very well. Anyways, I’m getting off track. :P (Also, Kiev is a lot more spread out.) So basically I can’t say much right now but I’ll put up a bunch of pictures and tell you what they are. Enjoy!

Kiev train station early in the morning

Old side of the train station

This was the breakfast at the hostel every morning. I tried caviar for the first time. Honestly, I didn't mind the black, but the red was way too fishy tasting for me.

McDonald's in Russian/Ukrainian

View from the hostel

Pretty street where our hostel was

One day we walked outside and saw about 20 people with newspapers with eyeholes in them.... they were all over, sitting down, walking, standing...creepy? A little.

Fuzzy Pink Panther

L'viv has a bunch of cute little alleys

Cute trains for tours

Really cute café we went to

Our beds

Bookstore that honestly was not as cool as it looks. It was basically the whole bottom floor but was pretty much empty inside.

Opera House

Crepes! Yummy. This one had chicken, pickles, cheese, and tomatoes.

We went to an armor museum. Honestly, just a bunch of swords mostly. Not too cool.

We climbed 361 steps up Castle Hill, which is a hill with no castle. Just a flag. But this is the view of L'viv. It's very different from Kiev, not a lot of tall buildings.

There was a Greek restaurant literally right next door to our hostel and we went there one night. Sooo good. And the woman spoke better German than English so Kenz and I talked to her in German. :)

Someone parked the car in the hostel lobby...

Cute lane

We went exploring one day and passed a medical university. This is a statue of a man holding a heart.

The university

Khot-dogi! (hot dogs)

We thought it was a normal restaurant but it was more of a tea house for old women...And this is what a ham sandwich is.

We went to a café and got super thick hot chocolate.

We were there on Women's Day so there was a lot going on.

uh...why the tigger?

L'viv train station on the way home

So that's pretty much the gist of it. We worked double time today (8 hours!). But the second half was a piece of cake ;) We have to get up really early because we have to leave probably at 7 am at the latest. We're leaving on our Eurotour tomorrow! We'll be going to Budapest, Vienna, Prague, and Dresden. Kenz and I are so excited to be back in a German speaking culture, one to be able to speak German, and two to be able to buy things like Salserbrot and Stabilo pens! Anyways, the bus ride tomorrow to Budapest is about 18 hours (?). I don't know. I could be way off. I know though that we don't cross the Hungarian border until Sunday so, lots of sleeping on the bus.

Hopefully I won't take as long to write about our tour as I did to write about L'viv.

Have a good week everyone!

The Adorableness of Ukraine

So this week has been pretty good, lots of sunshine and not too bad as far as teaching goes. Because of my chipper mood I wanted to share some cute things we've seen so far. :) I think I already wrote about the graffiti, if not, there are notes painted everywhere saying things like, "Good morning, my love!" and "I love you, little one!" So that is pretty cute to start with. Other things? Daddy-daughter couples. Sooo cute! You see dads walking, on the metro, wherever, taking their daughters to school. I don't know why but I think they look so cute, especially because the dad usually carries his daughter's backpack, like in this picture:

Also to be seen: siblings. Incredibly adorable too. :)

And of course the babushka has to take them out once in a while (or the other way around?).

Aside from the random cuteness we see around Kiev, there are our kids. First, romance has found our school. Levon and Nastya have grown quite fond of each other during the past couple days. One of the other boys likes her too and isn't too pleased with this blooming relationship. (oh, also Levon got a haircut. It's really short now, see?)

We were playing a wild version of monkey-in-the-middle and some of them weren't too interested, including Masha, who had her birthday today.

Well, yesterday Egor showed up in suspenders. And made this face for the camera. Congrats, Egor. You've officially made it to the adorable list.

The weekend again!! Weeks are going by so fast. Great thing about this weekend: the weather is beautiful and we're going to L'viv. (Yesterday it was 39 F!) Also, Tuesday is Women's Day (a holiday in Ukraine where women are given flowers and chocolate, coolest holiday? maybe :P), so we both got a little bouquet of flowers on behalf of our kids, and then the main coordinators, Tanya and Igor, gave us five girls some chocolates.

Like the milk bottles they're in?

It was also one of our kids' birthdays today, so we had a party for her near the end. The food was better than at the last birthday party.

In other news, on Thursday, since it's been so warm all the snow has been melting and creating huge puddles, some of which take up the whole path. This can be a bit of a problem to walk around because people like to bend the top of the fence down.

This is the path, with barely any puddles though, the sun has dried up most of them.

So after school on Thursday, I was trying to walk around the puddle, on the 1" surface not completely submerged, and I was looking down, and maybe you can guess what's gonna happen next....I put my head up and ran right into this:

the result? This:
We decided it would be a good idea if I went back to school rather than walk 20 minutes home.

Anyways, enough of that. We're leaving later tonight to go to L'viv! We're taking a sleeper train, we'll see how that goes. :)

Have a good weekend and happy women's day to all the women! :)