July 13, 2010

Well, first off, Happy Birthday to Julie!  We were all running around getting things ready for Julie's surprise party throughout the day.  Yura brought three different chocolate cakes, chocolate, chocolate with honey, and chocolate with cherries. It was a very busy day for the Ukraine Mission Team!

We had 18 kids com to Kids' Camp today, 6 new faces showed up, so we had 25 individuals show up so far in the past two days.  The theme for today was God guides us so our activities for today centered around that idea.  For the projects today, the half the kids went into the prayer room in the Student Center and made God's eyes which look like stars that you're supposed to follow or, like well, God's eye.  The other half stayed in the main room and did activities that emphasized that it is hard to do two things at once such as, rubbing your belly and patting your head, and trying to draw circles when moving your hand in a circle.  Though when asked if doing two things at once, most kids said "Nooooo!"  Charlie then taught the kids Simon Say's, which was a big hit!

For snack time, we introduced the kids s'mores in which we served around a "camp fire" (really just a round plastic table cloth that we made the kids sit in).  Afterwards we switched group and Kjersti introduced a new game in which you find the leader where one person goes out of the room and the group picks a leader.  Everyone in the group follows what the leader does (clapping their knees, sticking your tongue out, etc...) while the person who left the room has 3 guesses to find out who the leader was.  This was done while a third of the group went and painted stars on the other half of the mural that was started yesterday.

After lunch, the team then headed out to the special needs center which was about 40 minutes, walking/mashutka ride, from the Student Center.  The people there made amazing and beautiful handmade crafts and jewlery, such candles, necklaces, butterflies, pysanky, and icons.  Most of what they made had been shipped off to France so that they can be sold to support the center when we got there, but the examples they had were excellent.  One of the women had an ingenious and quick way of tying off the beads of the necklaces.

Volodya from the special needs center then saw us off as we boarded the mashutka back into the center of town, where we went back to the hostel and went off to the art market.  This was one of the few places in L'viv where you have to haggle with the sellers and you cannot accept the first price they give you, well unless it has a price tag of course.  Perry got this fancy black with red embroidery Ukrainian shirt that he's going to try to wear our last day here, with Yura, and maybe to the Opera House too tomorrow.  I'm sure many of the souvenirs for back home were bought today in the art market.

Dinner food was from a place called big burger where they stuff shredded cabbage, carrots, corn, mayonnaise, and ketchup, with either a hot dog, burger, or super hot dog, or super burger.  It was a collegiate experience because there were no seats at the place, basically just looked like a hole in the wall, and most of the students from Ivana-Franko University go there for eats.  It was very delicious and very filling for most of the team, though Perry and I wanted more.  Hannah and Julie were the messiest eaters out of the bunch, Hannah spilled a bunch on the ground and Julie had some on her leg.

Then came English club, which are Tuesday nights at 7 in the Student Center, where a bunch of people from around the community came in to practice their English.  Micheal led the group by telling us both Ukrainians and Americans, what topics to talk about in English.  Topics ranged from what pets you have to who is the most influential older person to you.

A bunch of us then ended the night by going on a late night excursion into L'viv to find us some churches that changed colors at night.  Charlie was especially excited about going to McDonald's in Ukraine!  In which he got scrumptious potato wedges.  L'viv seemed much more livelier at night with the street music playing, the lights on the trees, people mostly walking about, it was nice.   Kjersti and Julie were very excited about chocolate milk in a triangle and even made a whole dance and song about it, which start with "chicken in a box" and will probably end with "yogurt in a bag!"

It was a very busy day today and we are all looking forward to the last day of Kids' Club and the ballet at the Opera House tomorrow.

God Bless,
Eric Virakone