This week was good. Pretty busy, and my brain is still floating somewhere in the weird goop river that flows inbetween Russian and English, but a good week. There was no pizza this week (not for lack of trying, mind you!).
On Monday we met with Lyuba to teach her again. She's doing good. We also ate corn on the cob for lunch. It's not quite as good here as it is back in the states. That night we went to visit a member family and had dinner with them and talked about life and happiness. We also played liar's dice with them. Remember from Pirates of the Carribean 2 how the weird, half-fish half-boat crew members abourd the Flying Dutchman were playing that dice game? Yeah, that's Liar's Dice. It's super fun actually.
On Tuesday we went to the Rynok of Old Things ("Rynok" is the English spelling of the Russian word for market, but market doesn't accurately describe the feeling of a rynok. the "y" is pronounced almost like 'ee' but mixed with the 'i' in 'bit'. Don't worry, there won't be a test on how to say this.). In this rynok you can find: old things. Lots of them. It's kind of cool, but I don't love shopping, so it didn't hold a ton of interest for me. That night we went to meet with our friend Aleks. On the way there we heard a girl speaking English with an American accent, something that is, understandably, very rare to hear on the streets of Ukraine. We didn't have time to investigate further though. That is, until we got to the branch to meet Aleks and discovered that he was going to be pretty late. So, we did what any self-respecting small group of Americans would do in a foreign country; we went back to see if we could find another small group of Americans in said foreign country.
They turned out to not be there anymore, so to avoid having awkwardly walked back and forth in such a short time, we made it seem like our return had a purpose by going to Digma (imagine the worst, most overpriced cornerstore in the world and then multiply it by a normal shopping center) to get the ice cream that is currently half-price there. To our surprise, the American girls had also gone into Digma with the same idea, but they were walking in as we were walking out, so we couldn't really stop them.
We bought our ice cream, then left, only to find that they were standing in the middle of the path that leads back to the branch, so we finally took the opportunity to stop and talk to them. They turned out to be from Tennesse. One girl was there visiting her Ukrainian mother's family and the other was her friend who got dragged along for the ride. They were cool. The mom and uncle were a little buzzed, but nice.
We did end up meeting with Aleks, who taught us a bunch of Russian slang for fun.
Wednesday we went to do service, but we didn't end up having to do anything, so that was fun. We got to pet adorable husky puppies afterwards as a reward for having done nothing. Not quite sure what the moral of that story is.
After the not-service we set Elder Cannon loose with a hatchet on a pile of branches to collect wood for English practice that night. We taught our class how to tie lashes and then built a tower together. Those familiar with the Bible might notice an interesting twist in the fact that a group of people all trying to learn a foreign language all got together outside of a church and tried to build the tallest tower they could while speaking that foreign language. Similarities to Biblical events aside, it was fun.
Thursday we had a good district meeting, and that night we went to and English club to help them out. That was fun.
Friday once again drew the shortest straw this week, and so I won't write anything about it. I did figure out what we'ver been doing Fridays though, we plan for the week on Fridays. Anyway, that's already too much about Friday, I've mentioned it 4 times already in one paragraph.
On Saturday we had a good game night. Nobody really came for the sport part of game night because of rain, but that was OK. The sport part of game night usualy involves soccer, and I don't play soccer.
Sunday was a rainy, cold day, not fun. Church was really good though. Lyuba came again, and her son Artyom came too. We visited a member that day who we found out has really bad cancer. Pretty scary stuff, but he seems to be handling it well.
Well, that was basically my week.
Peace out!
Elder Robison
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