Elder Alec Martschenko: Spreading Good Will Through Sports & English Classes

This week we were pretty busy with Ternopil stuff. So far we've been doing two English practices a week (Tues and Thurs) and they wanted to get a sports day going too. Basically, whatever to meet folks and make connections for when we can start doing missionary work there. So, we went there Tuesday and Thursday, and then on Saturday again for sports day. We spent a couple hours advertising for English and sports day by throwing a football around in center. We had to special order the football from an online importer in Ukraine. We also invited a bunch of people from English practice to come play with us. We ended up having about 15 people show up, which was pretty successful. We just played volleyball the whole time. I'm definitely a little rusty, but it was still pretty fun.

Playing volleyball with the locals in Ternopil

So, we kinda spent more time in Ternopil than Khmelnitskiy this past week, so mostly all we did was English and sports day. There's about 50-60 people (as opposed to 5-6 in Uzhhorod) who show up to English in Ternopil, and I teach the advanced group, so it's always pretty fun. Last week they started asking me about American football, So I spent like 20 minutes trying to explain to them how football works--it's very difficult to explain to non-native speakers, but I think they got the basic gist. They also enjoy games like Catchphrase and Pictionary, and they think mad libs are hilarious. If you've got ideas for any other games or activities, I'd appreciate it. I have to plan three different English practices a week, so I'm kinda running out of ideas.

Other news: I was called as first counselor in the branch presidency yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing, but I'm excited to work with the branch president here--he's been branch president for 7 years already and he's a real good guy. We're just hoping he doesn't move to Russia to be closer to his girlfriend he met thru a Mormon dating site though. We don't really have anyone else who could take his spot yet.

I'll be headed to Rivne tomorrow for some exchanges, It'll be very interesting going back to my first city. I'm sure it'll look totally different in the summertime, and I'm also sure it'll feel totally different after being more used to the country and everything. Should be interesting, I'm just not looking forward to the 5 hour bus ride there and back. We were talking about this the other day, and I don't ever want to hear anyone complain about how uncomfortable flying on an airplane is. It's just interesting how people here take these buses (standing up if they have to) and just accept it as part of life, but people in other parts of the world complain about the inconvenience of flying in an airplane. At least airplanes have AC. Here old grandmas yell at you if you open a window cause they think the cross-breeze will make you sick. So, I'm totally used to it now, it's just a very big difference.

Speaking of buses, I attached a couple pics from one of our 2.5 hour bus rides back from Ternopil. We thought it would be a good idea to try to play chess, but the heat combined with the bumpy Ukrainian roads and the swerving bus driver meant that we felt super car sick before we could even get the pieces set up. So that didn't last long.