Ukrainian Pad Thai

Ukrainian pad thai

We're planning our own fourth of July party here actually as a branch activity. It won't be on the fourth, unfortunately, but we'll have it on Saturday. We're planning on just doing a typical fourth of July cookout. It's gonna be a rough approximation cause you can't quite replicate it perfectly, but we're gonna do the best we can. We're planning burgers (with Ukrainian ground beef) and mac and cheese (with Ukrainian cheese) so we'll see how that goes. We're also gonna make some coleslaw (they love cabbage here, so it should be a hit). We're also gonna buy some good old Lay's chips (they have a special "American ribs" flavor so we'll try that). Unfortunately they don't have watermelon anywhere yet, so we'll have to settle for some other fruit. I would do strawberries, but apparently the crop of strawberries this year got contaminated and everyone is getting super sick from them. Which is a bummer cause they were really cheap and super tasty. If you have any other ideas let me know. I think we're gonna make our own kan jam set and have a football there to throw around too. Should be fun, We just gotta hope that people show up.

Last week was a pretty normal week. The only out of the ordinary thing was we had some visitors from Kiev here Friday evening for a seminary/institute activity. The guy that came is a counselor in the Kiev stake presidency (so he's like a pretty big deal here) and he came and did a little fireside (for our two active seminary/institute students) so that was neat. We went to buy refreshments for it, but apparently there was some kind of cyber attack in a bunch of countries that shut down all kinds of services, so we ended waiting like half an hour in line at the grocery store and were almost late to the fireside. Oops. 

A highlight of the week was a cool new outdoor restaurant opening a couple minutes from the church building. It's not just any restaurant though, It's a hip pad thai restaurant. Asian food is like not a thing here so it's very rare to get any kind of Asian food, so we were pretty pumped. We got it on Saturday night as we were walking home (I attached a pic) and it was without a doubt the worst pad thai I've ever had in my life. That being said, it was still pretty good and we went back again for lunch today. 

Hope everything is going well for y'all and hope you have a good fourth of July!

Alec