Happy Kiev Day!

Kiev Day is a holiday in Ukraine celebrated the last weekend of May. The streets of Khreschatyk were full of music, concerts, and most of all, SOUVENIRS! :D Amber and I got ALL of our souvenirs and random nick nacks yesterday on souvenir street. I LOVE nick nacks, and felt the need to buy every little cute nick nack that I saw! It was hard,but I resisted. And didn't waste TOO much money... 

Souvenir street. You can't really tell in the picture, but it goes on for probably about 2 miles (we're guessing) and it was so crowded with stands and people!

                                       

 I love that they have this piano out on the street for anyone to play! Makes me happy.:)

                                   Jonathan putting on a concert for us

                                       They sure do love their eggs here...

                                                                 FOR NARNIA!!!

                              One of the many random concerts we saw :)

                                                          Fancy shmancy pipes

                 Ukraine is so pretty! I love it.

                                                    Good ole' Mckdonalds!

                       Oh my goodness. The ice cream here is so stinkin good. Its so much better than any ice cream I have had! I can't even describe. It's so creamy, but not too creamy. Its just...perfect. This flavor is vanilla and black currant. It's so good.

                      Umm....yeah, Amber's holding a monkey. No big deal.
Please observe the look of horror on her face. hahahahah

                                    Thanks for ruining the picture Amber...

                                   

Making Borscht!

Alia and Spencer came over to our apartment one night after teaching at school. We kind of had a movie night...But it was a little squishy...

Then Olia taught us how to make Borscht! :D And by "teach us how to make borscht", I really mean that she explained to us how to make it while Aundrey made the soup. haha

It was my first time having borscht since being in Ukraine. And it was delicious!

(even if it did make the kitchen insanely hot!!)

Our weekend trip

Amber's older sister is serving her mission in Ukraine. Her Mission president is WAY awesome and let us go and visit her for the weekend in Khmelnitsky! It's a small town about 4.5 hours south west of Kiev. Thursday  night Amber and I took a train to Khmelnitsky, arrived around 4:30 in the morning, and waited in the train station for the sun to come up. Then we headed to our Hotel.

.

            We found the Hotel. :)And we were SO HAPPY!

Getting lunch at the Lemon cafe

                                                            It was SO cute:)

On the first night being there, we were walking back to the Sister's apartment, when these 3 little girls heard us speaking English and were SO excited to come talk to us Americans. Then they took us on a tour. :)

Then they all took turns getting pictures with us and gave us all hugs before we left. haha they were cracking us up!

It was so much fun to be able to spend time with Sister Olds and Sister Daniel for the weekend! We got to see what the life of a Missionary was like, and it was really cool. :)

And once again, it was a GREAT weekend!

Victory Day!

Victory Day is like the 4th of July in Ukraine.
We went down to Khreschatyk street to celebrate with pretty much the entire city.

 No but seriously...the entire city was there!!! hahah the streets were PACKED.

                            Big Mama!

                                             Big Mama and I...we're so cute.

     "you think we can stack 4 people?" challenge excepted!

                      I like these kiddos!

       

                    Let the Hunger Games begin!!

 Audrey (BEST head Teacher) introduced us to this amazing pizza place! it's surprising how many pizza places they have here. But I'm not complaining!

                                         Their bathroom signs were awesome. 

                     Cute lil' Johney boy.



But the best part of Victory Day was after lunch when we decided to go for a walk on Pedestrian Bridge....

"I'm going to pee my pants!"

The excitement was getting to me...

                                                             WE DID IT! :D

All the crazies who jumped off the Bridge.:)

It was SO FUN!

Yupp, it was a good day. 

Tacky Tourists.

  I got back to Kiev last night after a 6 day trip to Poland, Czech Republic, and Germany! It was definitely a trip I will never forget, for a lot of different reasons. ;) I had a blast! traveling is amazing. Although not every part of this trip was amazing...
You see, little did we know that this wasn't JUST a trip...this was a bus tour. We were spending the next 6 days with random Ukrainians on a BUS TOUR. Tacky tourists? yupp, that was us! haha or atleast that is what we felt like. We were told that we were going on a bus tour AFTER we took our seats on the bus and then got informed that it was about a 20 hour bus drive to our first stop in Krakow, Poland. It actually ended up being 22 hours. Gotta love bus tours.

                                                           Losing our minds....

                                   Atleast we stopped about every 3 hours,
              so we were able to stock up on juice! :)

Krakow!

                                                  

                          The Dragon in the picture above blew fire from his mouth every few minutes. This was Amber's reaction the first time it happened. ;)

                                                     Spencer's Ukrainian pose.

We love our food!

Prague

I. LOVE. PRAGUE.

Yay traveling! 

 Cheers to Prague!

 We found this classy restaurant on top of this hill that had an AMAZING view of the city! We felt pretty cool, to say the least.

 AHH! I can't get over how pretty it was!

 Expert explorers.

 Just takin'a walk through town. In Prague. Hehe I like saying that. :)

 I want to go back!

Alright I admit...The Mckdonalds IS really good here. But in our defense, the chicken actually taste like chicken!

Worclaw

                          
                          WE FOUND MEXICAN FOOD IN POLAND!!!!!!!!!!!

                               It was seriously the happiest day of our lives!

                                    Spencer tells funny stories that make Amber die of laughter.

                    our super cute hotel! :)

That night we heard music, so we went outside and followed it. We ended up finding a concert! we have no idea who she was, but it was AWESOME. :)

 

 

Berlin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               I love their walk signs!

 

 

Back to Kiev

After a long 6 days of traveling and a LOT of time on that freakin bus, we finally made it back to Kiev! I'm still not sure how we survived being on that bus for so long, but thanks to gummy bears, chocoalate, juice, and books, we did it!

Traveling is fun.