Elder Alec Martschenko: Celebrating the USA with Ukrainians

An American holiday in Ukraine

So I actually did end up getting your package. Thank you! We decided if there was hamburger seasoning in there then we had a justifiable reason to call the mission office and have them send it to us. Usually they just wait til someone comes to L'viv. So, it got here Friday afternoon! There was no hamburger seasoning . . . but all the America memorabilia was perfect for our activity, so it all worked out. The water bottle is very much appreciated, the last couple months have been brutal. And the t-shirts are very very cool as well. I thought about wearing them to our activity, but I figured the Go Heels Go America was more appropriate. The whole spinner craze is super interesting. It's kinda weird, but I definitely understand how it became such a big thing.

Cooking burgers for the 4th of July picnic

As for the activity, it was actually a pretty big success. We spent a whole lot of time over the past week preparing for it, and it kind of paid off actually. I'll attach a ton of pictures, but we actually had about 20 people come from church or from or English practice or just from people we've met on the street, which is by far the most successful activity I've seen here in Uzhhorod and people seemed to have a good time. We tried to get the food we made as close to American food as possible, and it actually kind of worked out. We made some burgers with the best ground beef we could find, and they turned out pretty OK. We didn't want to run out of food, so we made 40 hamburger patties, cooked them all right before the activity at home, and brought them to the river side in aluminum pie tins. Somehow they stayed warm and actually tasted pretty good.

The mac and cheese arrives

We also made some homemade cole slaw--which really sounds much more Ukrainian than American--basically cabbage, carrots, and cole slaw. But it turned out pretty good. The mac and cheese wasn't quite as good, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting with weak Ukrainian cheese. and I was going entirely without a recipe, So it worked out ok. And it looked pretty good after we baked it. The biggest hit though was definitely banana bread. Ukrainians love banana bread, but I'm sure if we told them how much sugar was in it they would freak out.

Homemade Kan Jam

My favorite part of the activity, though, was the Kan Jam. We went to a home depot type store and bought two big buckets, then we cut out slots in them and used them to play Kan Jam. I don't know if the Ukrainians really understood it and I didn't get a chance to play, but I think it worked out pretty well.

That was really the big focus of the week. Most of the time was spent preparing for that. This week we'll be in L'viv for mission conference, and then right after to Ivano-Frankivsk for exchanges, so we'll be doing lots of traveling. Unfortunately we got like the worst possible train tickets, but I'm sure it'll be ok.

I attached a bunch of pictures, mostly from the activity, but also a few random ones. Keep an eye out for my world series champs hat. There's also a nasty picture of a cucumber we found in the fridge of the vacant apartment here where the other elders used to live. Since this \city is gettingT closed down to two missionaries after this transfer, we had to go over to their apartment to clean it up and pay rent. Apparently they forgot some stuff there, so it was pretty gross. Also just a few other random pictures.