What to Say?

I don't even know what to say. There's so much! I guess I can just give a brief overview of the last week as best I can. So I flew in Tuesday night and was taken to my host home (I think I wrote about that in my last post). Wednesday, I met my teaching group. They are all pretty cool and I think we will get along great. After meeting them, we took the metro to the university we will be having our Russian language classes at (we get five weeks worth free and have to pay if we want more). The metro is insane!!! It's the world's top metro system and I can tell why - it goes 344 ft below the ground! After you buy your token, you go in and take the most incredibly long escalator I have ever seen down to the trains. I would take a picture but it's illegal to take pictures of the metro. Maybe I can somehow sneak one. Anyways, the most I have had to wait for a train is like two minutes; once it gets there, you get on FAST because the doors will close on you if you aren't quick!

Thursday, we went to one of our schools for a lunch of pasta with nothing on it, bread, and "premium" sausages which tasted like hot dogs to us. It was great! :) After that, we were pretty much free to do whatever we wanted but Sarah, Ray, and I went back down to the university to pick up everyone's passports because they needed them to register us for the class. It was kind of fun to take the metro with just us three.

9/2 - Very wet Russia!

Friday, we spent just about the whole day preparing for teaching on Monday. I am teaching at two different schools but just kindergarteners. Random fact, Russians don't wear shoes indoors so we all got slippers to wear in our schools! That night, we had balini night. Balini's are just like crepes but in Russia. I brought over my huge jar of peanut butter (my whole group thanks you majorly Mom!!) and we put that, Nutella, and bananas on them. Delicious!

9/3 - Balinis

Saturday, we spent a lot of the day preparing for school as well but around 3, we decided we needed to get out and see a few sights. We headed out with some directions and saw the Church on Spilt Blood, the Hermitage, and the other places around there. Quite a nice break I would say!

9/4 - Church on Spilt Blood

Sunday, we obviously all wanted to go to church. The only problem was that the directions we were given from the previous teachers were awful and we only had the mission office's phone number which they wouldn't have answered. So what did we do? Got on a bus and tried to figure it out as we go! Our directions told us which bus to take and to get off at the next stop after we saw a purple sex shop (yeah that's right; there's a lot of those around here). So we got off and started heading in what we thought was the right direction. After wandering for two hours, all of us in heals stopped while a couple others went on. Some more time went on and we were going to call it quits when the others texted us that they found it! Two hours late but the next service was starting in 45 minutes! How lucky! We got there and there were two elders and a sister willing to translate for us. It was a branch of about 75 people but just as strong in their faith as any ward. It was amazing to hear all of their testimonies, with it being Fast Sunday, about how they love the church, President Monson, and the new temple dedicated in Kiev. Such an amazing meeting!

9/5 - Random picture I know but this is my new cell phone my host family gave me to use. Notice the Russian letters above the English.