Exploring Churches & Castles

The trees and everything here are just starting to bloom. I don't have any pictures just yet, but in the next couple weeks there should be some pretty cool stuff. Apparently there are thousands and thousands of tourists that will be here to see the blooming trees, so it must look pretty cool. 

We haven't watched General Conference yet. They usually do it the week after because of the time delay. Since so many people don't really have reliable internet connections (or internet at all) everyone comes to the church to watch it together. Usually what happens is that all the members will watch it at the church and all the missionaries will go to a different room and watch it in English. But since this branch is so small and we don't  have a TV or a computer at the branch (we have to borrow a laptop from a member,) we'll all just watch it together in Ukrainian. But we'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll be able to understand more than I think.

Have they finally finished all that stuff in downtown Cary? I feel like they've been doing construction there for like 20 years. It looks pretty nice though from the pictures you sent.

  

As for basketball. At this point I have no choice but to cheer for the Tar Heels. Can't have them losing back to back years. That's all I'll say about that.

Here's a bunch of pictures and a bit about my week. 

Cool church in Uzhorrod

There's a few just from around Uzhorrod. there's lots of really cool churches and stuff here. The yellow one that I have a few pictures of is really cool. We wanted to go inside, but it was actually closed. We walked around the side and saw someone there that we had actually talked to on the street a few days ago. He lived at the seminary there and is like a priest or something but he's super super nice and he invited us in and gave us a little tour. It was a very cool, very old, very orthodox church. I didn't want to take any pictures of the inside but they are very elaborately decorated. 

There's also a picture of a piece of paper with what looks like scribbles all over it. We talked to this old guy selling his (really cool, actually) paintings out of his car (that he was clearly living out of.) We just wanted to know how much his paintings cost, but he ended up asking what church we were from, and then he told us all about his theory about the earth and the calendar system and the lunar cycle and all kinds of stuff about things that prove that God exists (Facebook post kind of logic.) He drew the schematic for us and told us that we need to share it with everyone, because it would be able to stop all wars all over the world. So this is my part I guess in fulfilling his request.

A Ukrainian artist's expression of faith

There's also a pic of my favorite lunch spot with a view of the river. People really like schwarma in this country for some reason, and it's the closest thing you can get to a burrito so we eat it all the time.

Alec's favorite lunch spot on the banks of the river Uzh

Overlooking Uzhorrod

The rest of the pictures I think are from today. 

At the castle in Mukacheve

For p-day we took a bus outside of Uzhorrod to another town nearby called Mukacheve. They have a pretty sweet castle there, it's way up on top a hill, and it's actually pretty big. So we went there and walked around for a bit. I was actually pretty impressed with how cool it was. They had little museums and gift shops in the castle and a bunch of statues all around (I think I put a picture of the torture chamber, too). There were some pretty cool views from the terraces of the castles, too; there's actually some pretty big mountains nearby. 

Statues at the Mukacheve castle

Alec at Mukacheve Castle

The view of the Carpathian Mountains from Mukacheve Castle

Alec's E.T. moment with statue at Mukacheve Castle

Mukacheve Castle courtyard

Alec with statuesque friends at Mukacheve

One thing about the pic of the keys: Those are two old castle keys next to the key we have for the church building here. I feel like a dungeon master every time I have to open the church building. 

Alec's church key compared to castle dungeon keys

-Alec