Settling into Ivano-Frankivsk

A final goodbye (again) to Alec's English students in Ternopil before heading off to Ivano-Frankivsk.

  This week there have been a lot of changes. I went from the second smallest branch in the mission to one of the very biggest (about 45 people at church.) I felt like I was back in America when I was at church yesterday--there were so many kids running around and noises and it was just very different from what I'm used to. It's also super weird having a branch that actually contributes stuff. We're doing a big "pumpkin" activity (cause we can't do Halloween activities) on Saturday, and all we as missionaries have to do is bring a pinata. I'm more accustomed to running the whole activity, so this'll be pretty nice.

I left Khmelnitskiy on Tuesday morning to go to Ternopil for English and then straight from Ternopil went to L'viv. I stayed in L'viv Tuesday night, and then got up super early to catch a train to Ivano-Frankivsk. I've already been in this city several times for registration or for exchanges or whatever, so I already knew what to expect and kind of how to get around. 

The apartment we have is pretty nice, actually. It's just a side apartment to a house (which is super rare in Ukraine) so we actually have kind of a front yard, kind of. The best part is that the neighbors have a really cool dog. 

Lots of this week was spent doing little service things like helping members move furniture or carry stuff back from the market, but we also spent some time stopping by inactive members, without much success. Only one person yelled at us though, so that's not too bad. 

On Wednesday we went to a university to do a little English practice for them there. It was very impromptu and a lot of people showed up, so we kind of just did a little q&a and let them ask us questions, and then did a bit of discussion. People looove talking to Americans. It kind of blows their mind sometimes, honestly. Makes you feel pretty popular.

Ivano-Frankivsk is a very cool city and I'm excited to be here. Next week we'll be having tons of interesting activities, including going to L'viv on Sunday for a district conference. It'll be cool to see all the members from the other cities I've served in. One of them, from Uzhhorod, actually just got her mission call to Pittsburgh. Everyone was pretty surprised cause her English is super super bad, and they in the past don't usually call people to English-speaking missions if they don't at least know English a little bit. But, it's gonna be super cool for her to be in America. She did a tonnnnn to help us out in Uzhhorod, so I might have you send her a birthday package or something when she gets to America.

That's about it for this week. I don't have a ton of pictures for you cause I left my SD card in Khmelnitskiy. Sorry. I'll get it back this week though so it's ok. The pictures i do have are from my last day in Ternopil. It was super awkward actually, cause I had told everyone last week that it was gonna be my last day, and then I ended up coming back on Tuesday for one more. So that was weird, but cool to see them one last time.

. . . and Ternopil loved Alec!

That's super interesting about grandma's ancestors coming from Galicia. Here, it's called Галичина and I knew it translated to Galicia, I just never made the connection that that's where they're from. That's very interesting. They could very well be from these cities where I'm serving.

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec