That’s right, my team if off to Kiev (the capital of Ukraine) tomorrow morning. As much as I hate to give an information dump, I am afraid that is all I have time for!

It is midnight here and I have to get up at 5:30. All of us girls are running around trying to get our bags packed and ready. We were just informed that our first night in Kiev will be a special formal dinner so now we need to pack nice clothes. For those of you who live with 13 girls you will know that this process will probably take a couple of hours. You know, trying on each others dresses, looking at everyone’s jewelry, playing with shoes and talking about hair-dos. Yes, this takes a couple of hours!

We will be in Kiev to celebrate 50 years of YWAM in Ukraine! How amazing is that?! We are all very excited about it. Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM, will be there and we will be able to meet him at some point during the conference. It is truly an honor for us to hear a message from him.

After the conference, we will head over to the YWAM base in Kiev to spend the week with their DTS team. We will all join together for some time of teaching and fellowship. We will return the 8th (so yes, it will be awhile until I can post anything.)

Ok, to back up a little. If anyone noticed I said there were 13 girls in the house, which means that another girl joined our team. Yep, one more girl has come to Ternopil! Her family has been in India for the past year and a half. Her and her father and some problems with their visas and so returned to Ukraine. While here they happened to remember about the DTS and thought they would call to see if there was still room. Naturally, there was one more bed in the girls room so of course she was meant to fill it. Now there are 11 girls (+2 staff girls who live here) and 3 boys (+2 male staff members.) We are very excited to have her here with us, I can already tell she will be a ton of fun!

A few cultural moments from last week:

1) Riza and I decided to hold an impromptu English class for other students who wanted to learn English. Riza is from Turkey and his wife Lena, is our translator. We were teaching a few key phrases such as “Hi, my name is ______. What is your name? How are you? I am fine.” All was going well until someone got a little mixed up.

Lena: Hi, my name is Lena. What is your name?

Marichka: I am fine.

It has become a running joke now.

2) On Sunday a few of us went out to pizza. The waitress was taking my order for a drink (I abstained from asking for tea with milk) instead I asked for water with gas. Her next question was a new one. “Do you want little gas or lots gas?” I was so dumbfounded that I could only give a blank stare and Dima (who was translating for me) just ordered for me. Apparently you can get water with lots gas of little gas. You learn something new everyday.