Here are some pictures of my new home! It is pretty cute I think.
We are about a 15 minute walk from the base and I have discovered all the quiet shortcuts through the parks. There is a little market just around the corner and the bus stop is right outside our pantry window.

View from one side of our building

Living room (door in background goes to a small enclosed balcony from which previous photo was taken.)

Closet/foyer (Door to the left is to the living room, unseen door to the right is to our bedroom.)

Bedroom with me in it! Can you guess which side of the bed I sleep on?

Awesome kitchen!! Window goes to a small pantry.

Notice there is no refrigerator. We are still looking for one…

View of the other side of our building from our pantry. That's a huge, strictly-traditional, Pentecostal church.

I have found an apartment and am sharing it with a dear friend named Marichka. Marichka does not speak or understand English well. It has already been an interesting first few days together! Just last night we had a few fun misunderstandings that did not help the communication gap!

Scenario #1
Marichka enters asking if I want chai (tea in Russian). I said “yes, I would love some.” She asks me which kind of tea I wanted in Russian but with a tone of uncertainty. In my attempt to affirm her in my understanding Russian, I said “yes which tea.” She said “which?” I said yes. Hooray, English has been learned… or so I thought. Five min later, I finish what I was doing and go into the kitchen to discover Marichka looking at all my boxes and tins of tea. She looks up and says “Meggie, I no find which tea. I looking and looking, I no find.” Poor Marichka was looking for the fictional tea called “Which.” When I explained the misunderstanding we had a good laugh.

Scenario #2
Marichka wanted to use my laptop for a skype date with her friend. My laptop is a little slow and so I told her to wait, but I said it in what I thought was Russian. Marichka, very confused, stood up from the couch. I looked at her very confused and she looked at me very confused. Apparently I said the word meaning ‘to stand.’ So when I was saying “wait, wait” I was really saying “stand, stand.”

Scenario #3
I was going through my Russian vocabulary cards and came to the word car. I proudly said, again, what I thought was the word for car, but I guess the word for car and man are very close. I mean very close! Marichka just laughed at me.

Oh, the adventures we will have!

I have been inundated with Ukrainain humor being here. Sounds like it would be fun right? Let me just share a bit of the humor with you and you can decide.

#1 A doctor came to check on his patient and found that he had already died. He asked the nurses if he had sweated a lot before he died. “Yes! Yes, he sweated a lot,” they replied. “Oh good, good, this is very good,” the doctor said.

When they told me that one, I said “is that it?” Still don’t get it.

#2 In the congress in America, if I asked a congressman a question they give me an answer. If I ask a congressman in Russia a question, they will spend 15 min explaining why I am an idiot.

They got a half chuckle from me on that one.

#3 Once a student had to take a test on animals. Unfortunately, he had only studied about fleas. The first animal was a dog. He said, “well it has ears, eyes, hair, a tail and four legs.” The teacher raised her eyebrows.” And all dogs have fleas, and fleas…” The teacher stopped him and showed him a cat. Again, “well it has ears, eyes, hair, a tail and four legs. And all cats have fleas…” Teacher shakes her head, then smiles and shows him a fish. “Oh, fish, fish, fish. Well it has eyes, a mouth, it breaths, and… but IF it had fleas…”

??????

#4 There were two lines of people in heaven. One line was for men who were the head of the house and the other for homes where the woman was the head of the home. The line for where the woman was the head was going on for eternity (I added that bit.) There was only one man in the line for where men where the head. Gabriel thought this was weird and went to ask the one man why he was the only one. “Why are you the only one in this line?” “I don’t know, my wife just told me to stand here.”

I actually laughed pretty good here.

#5 A man heard someone knocking at his door and opened it find a poor man standing there. The poor man said “please can you help, I just want something to eat.” The other man said “well before I give you any food you need to drink 10L of water.’ The poor man thought about it and decided it was worth food. So he drank and drank and when he was finished the other man asked what he wanted to eat. The poor man replied “well I’m not so hungry anymore.” “What?! You came to my door asking for food, why did you lie? Why didn’t you say you were thirsty?”

I guess it has something to do with slavik hospitality, but that still doesn’t make it funny.

#6 A man came home from work and sat down at the table. He slammed his fist on the table and shouted “who’s the head of this house?” His wife came in with her hands on her hips and said with an attitude “What?” The man instantly cowered and said stammering, “I just wanted to ask, is it ok just to ask a question.”

Another half chuckle

When they see that I don’t find their jokes very funny they ask me to share some American jokes. I haven’t been able to think of any though. Anyone know some good American jokes that only Americans would find funny?

DTS is finally over, my structured life is no longer so structured. What should a person do now? Go to Moldova of course!! Ruslan invited Allison and I to come to Moldova to visit his home and family.

It was a long bus ride there, but so worth it. Funny note about our trip there. We took an all night bus and at one of the pit stops in the middle of the night we came to a little food stand for a snack. On the menu was “Hot dog” or I could get “Hot dog with meat.” Hmmm don’t know about you, but it seems safer to go with the hot dog with meat if I have a choice!

Let me just say that Ruslan has such an amazing family!! They are so welcoming, so sweet, and warm-hearted; it really is difficult to describe this one-of-a-kind family.

Seeing a little bit of Ruslan's village

Lunch with the Fam

They quickly took us in and let us just lounge around. We played with Ruslan’s younger sisters, if I haven’t mentioned it before, he has four younger sisters!

Little mischievous Emanuela

Ruslan took us to see the capital of Moldova which is only a 15 min drive from his home. We saw some of the beautiful buildings and parks (that would be even more beautiful if we were there in the spring!)

Hanging out with Stefan the Great

It just so happened that Vice President Joe Biden was in Moldova giving some speech. There were lots of American flags up through out the city to welcome him. One other place we went was the mall. Can you guess what it would be called? I’ll tell you at the end.

One afternoon, Allison and I took three of Ruslan’s sisters out and we went exploring for spring flowers! We had a great time just getting out, walking, and seeing the Moldovan countryside! I can’t wait to see Moldova in the spring time!

Mariana, Ludmila, Georgeta

Georgeta gave up looking for flowers and started collecting pine cones!

We were privileged to be a part of Ruslan’s home group that meets on Thursdays. We went to two other prayer meetings and then finished our time in Moldova by going to Ruslan’s church, which was very alive! There was always lots of fellowshipping after the home group! 

Ruslan's church

The mall was called Malldova!

That’s right, I finally graduated from Youth With A Mission’s Discipleship Training School in Ternopil, Ukraine! Wahooooo!!! We had agreat last week debriefing what we have learned from DTS and what we will be doing in the coming months.

The graduation ceremony was held at a restaurant that overlooks the Ternopil lake. It was naturally a dress up occasion which meant I had to wear make-up and look nice. :p

I hate make-up!!

Each outreach team, (Ukraine, Ethiopia and India) shared about their time together and showed pictures for all the family and friends that came.  We ate a yummy meal that seemed to come in spurts between the presentations.

Ukraine team

India team

Ethiopia team

Everybody!

After the presentations were made, we finally were presented with our certificates of completion! And then a million photos were taken.

I've got it!! I finally got it!

It was such a great time to spend together before everyone left for their homes. Many students left that night, so it was time well spent together!