Ukrainian Independence Day

Alec returned to the city where he started for a quick Zone Conference.

This week in Khmelnitskiy was taken up mostly by a couple different things. First, we had Zone Conference in Rivne. That was on Wednesday, but we also had English practice in Ternopil on Tuesday night. So we took our usual train to Ternopil Tuesday morning, and then right after English practice we ran to the bus station to get on a 4-hour bus to Rivne. It ended up actually being the nicest bus I've been on in Ukraine. The roads most of the way were still pretty terrible, but at least the seats were pretty ok. (It's ok, the bus back to Khmelnitskiy made up for it.) Then on Wednesday we had Zone Conference. It was someone's birthday, so all the eleven missionaries went out to the famous pizza place in Rivne for dinner afterwards. 

A missionary's birthday is a great time for pizza.

We stayed in Rivne that night, then took the 5-hour bus ride back (we stood for the first 2 and a half hours) the next morning. 

As soon as we got back from Rivne, we started planning for our activity on Saturday. Wednesday was Independence Day, so we wanted to do some kind of big activity for it. Turns out, some Ukrainians don't really care about Ukrainian Independence Day. They only really made it an actual holiday like 5 or 6 years ago and no one really cared about it at all until Russia invaded. There's definitely some people who care a lot about it, but there's about an equal number of people who are anti-Ukrainian independence. 

Anyway, we threw an activity, and I'd say it was moderately successful. A decent number of people came, and it seems like they had a good time. We pretty much just had some activities, it was planned by Americans, so it was more like an American party with a Ukrainian theme, but it was still pretty good. 

Celebrating Ukrainian Independence Day

We made a pinata with Ukrainian colors--Ukrainians have no idea what pinatas are, but they love candy and they love beating things with sticks so it worked out pretty well. It eventually devolved into throwing the pinata and swinging at it like a baseball. Definitely not the safest activity but no windows were broken. 

Alec takes a swing at the pinata.

We also made some air rockets just for fun, and we did the game where you tie balloons to your ankles and try to pop other people's balloons. 

Balloon-poppoing game.

My favorite thing we did was "pin the moustache on Taras Shevchenko." Shevchenko is a national hero--mostly cause he's the only somewhat successful writer who wrote in Ukrainian, so he's on the money and there's statues of him all over the place. He had a gnarly moustache, so we made a game out of it. I don't know if they really understood what was going on, but I enjoyed it at least. 

Pin the mustache on Taras Shevchenko.

It was a fun activity and a decent number of people came, so I'd call it a success. 

That was most of our week up until Saturday night. On Sunday we had church, and then afterwards we visited some less-active/inactive members with our branch president. He's a taxi driver, so he has a car which made things wayyy easier. All of these meetings were pure Russian, so we let him do most of the talking.

Most of the pics are from the activity, but there's a few others:

Independence Day celebration in downtown Khlemitskiy

Sunset from my apartment.

Huge memorial in I had visited while in Rivne - it looks different in the summertime!

A ton of videos that I didn't bother to look through, some of them might be super lame - I honestly have no idea. I know there's one of a bunch of Ukrainians trying to sing happy birthday to Ukraine, it sounds exceptionally terrible. 

Happy birthday to Ukraine!

See if you can tell it apart from the one singing the national anthem.

Ukrainian national anthem - "Shche ne vmerla Ukraina"

There's also one of a huge rainbow from last night. 

Rainbow over Ukraine.

And the one of me with a moustache is my impression of the Taras Shevchenko statues. They all look the same and he's always mad and staring down. You can google them if you want.

Watching the US eclipse on a member's phone.

I was definitely pretty bummed about missing the eclipse, it sounds like it was quite the nationwide event. I definitely would have driven to somewhere with a total eclipse. That's a pretty rare opportunity. I actually did kind of get to watch it a little bit. We do a family home evening activity at the church every Monday night, and asomeone there was super interested in the whole solar eclipse thing. So, she turned on the NASA YouTube broadcast on her phone and we watched it live right as it reached totality in Oregon and Idaho. They definitely made a pretty huge deal about it, which is fair it is a pretty huge deal. I wonder what the planetarium did. I would assume they sent some people down to South Carolina to help with whatever events they were doing in Charleston.

All those pictures of grandpa's birthday are pretty funny--it's just very typical Ukrainian to not smile like that. I guess I never really noticed that before I came here. 

Hope everything is going well! Love you guys!

Alec