Monday, December 26, 2016

Christmas In Ukraine

Christmas here was pretty normal. I opened the gifts you sent me in the MTC and then came to church - just normal church because people celebrate Christmas on the 7th of January here. I gave out American candy to all the kids here, so I ended up having little kids coming up and begging me for more. We stuck around at church doing tithing/accounting work and then Skyping and then the missionaries all got together and made fajitas for Christmas dinner at the church. After that we had a white elephant gift exchange, and I ended up getting a pretty sweet cat shirt from Sister G. I think the present I gave was the best though - a little jar of nutella. It was super, super expensive: ~$1.75. 

That's pretty cool about Holly and Matt getting engaged. We all knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of when. I always figured it would be sometime toward the end of senior year.

I haven't really noticed any of the Americans getting Ukrainian accents. I think the languages are so different that you don't really get them mixed up in your mind. Spanish and English are pretty similar, so you might get some of those sounds confused.

Thank you for the updates. I always like hearing about what's going on in the real world. The only news I've heard lately is that some Russian ambassador was assassinated in Turkey and apparently it's a big deal.

P-days are definitely a nice break, but we're usually super, super busy. Like today, we had a lesson planned (that didn't end up happening) and we also had to help a member pick up packages for the church building from Nova Poshta  (an in-country postal service where you can ship a box across the country in like two days for a dollar or two.) There ended up being about 30 gallons of cleaning fluid and 6 or 7 huge boxes of who-knows-what. and the post office is a ten minute walk away. So between the five of us it took 3 trips back and forth to get it all, so my arms are a little tired. But, Christmas is more or less like any other day on a mission. You still have stuff to do.

My companion got a package. He got some candy and some ties (so we have matching ties today) and two huge things of peanut butter (that's a great Christmas present - they don't have peanut butter here.) And, yes, I gave him his stocking, don't worry. We haven't played the ping pong ball game yet - it looks really hard.

The constant companionship thing isn't really as bad as I thought it would be. You kinda get used to it pretty quick. I had a pretty bad cold about a week ago, but I'm feeling better now. It's luckily warmed up a bit the past couple days. I didn't think we'd have a white Christmas, but it actually snowed a ton Christmas Eve, so there was snow on the ground. I think that's the first time I've had a white Christmas. 


Sounds like ya'll a pretty sweet Christmas. Maybe you'll get some Ukrainian souvenirs as Christmas presents in a few months. 


Oh, yeah, something I was gonna ask for - if you have any ideas for easy recipes or just general cooking ideas I'd love to hear them. They have mission cookbooks in all of the apartments, but we're running out of things to make. Anything that doesn't require brown sugar, peanut butter, or vanilla is great. Also there's no canned soups here, so hopefully they don't require any canned soups. We definitely get lots of borsch here. It's super good though, so no complaints. 

I go back to Ivano-Frankivsk on Wednesday, but we're doing the train this time instead of the 9-hour bus ride.  

My Christmas present to you is going to be a ton of pictures. There's a ton so I'm not gonna bother trying to explain all of them. It's from a lot of Christmas stuff. Some with our Christmas sweaters:




Some from L'viv:




Some from our Christmas activity here in Rivne.




Here's a short video and picture from the Christmas caroling we did in Rivne after the activity. The song is Ідіть усе вірні - it means literally, "go every faithful."





Here's some from our wrapping Christmas gifts for our activity. Wrapping paper is pretty expensive so we pretty much just put them in big boxes and taped them shut.




Here's also one of our district on the train to L'viv. Sister S. made us a pumpkin pie, so we just sat there and ate pumpkin pie from our laps the first half hour of the train ride.



And, finally, here's a few random pics from Christmastime in Ukraine:



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Gotta go, but Merry Christmas!

Alec

1 comment:

  1. Hi Alec,
    I enjoyed reading about your journey. I'm glad you have friends there with you. Ukraine is prettier than I imagined.
    Love you, Alec. Keeping you in my prayers - always.

    Aunt Carol

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