Day in Kyiv!!

First impression: Kyiv has air with a mixed smell of sausage and one too many cigarettes. You see all kinds of buildings and monuments jutting up from the low-rise skyline of Kyiv. It's known as the 'city of a thousand golden domes' for the way the tops of the churches glitter in the hills.... To get from the train station to the metro (which takes you deeper into the city), you have to go up this huge escalator. Seriously, it is the biggest one i have ever seen. It took us practically 5 minutes to get from the bottom to top..

A young boy on a bicycle riding beside his dad roughly shrieked, "Americans" or the Russian equivalent to that. At Independence Square, We pass a communist rally and hundreds of cops. Lori explained to us that about half of Ukranians want to join back up with Russian and the other half pretty much think that's the worst idea in the entire world. talk about conflict.

We walked to this big open area, Khreschaty Park, that had an arch, and outlook, and two huge statues. The middle statue is black with two guys holding hands signifying friendship between Russia and Ukraine. The other, twice as large statue, made of granite commemorates a military council of 1654 which unified Russia and Ukraine. Regardless, they were fun to take pictures on.


From here, we went to St. Andrews Market which was basically a huge hill filled with street vendors. Then off to visit some of the beautiful Orthodox churches. We saw St. Sophia's and St. Michael's, & both were incredibly ornate. I also learned that they had both been rebuilt within the past 15 years because they were basically ruined by the Soviets. We had some lovely Ukrainian cuisine at 'Puzata Hata', where we stopped for lunch. I had chicken Kyiv and i tried cavas, both of which were pretty good. On the train ride home back to camp, i sat by a very tan (almost Mexican looking) family. The electricity in the grid that we were going through went down so we were stuck for about an hour.. But the mother that i was sitting by kept trying to talk to me. so one of the lovely translators, Ira, helped me out. They were gypsies that lived on the streets and the mom told me all about her life. It was really heartbreaking, yet beautiful all at the same time. The dad told me that they were all Christians and sort of tried to tell me the gospel/ ask if i knew Christ. and at the end of the conversation, he told me and Ira that he knew we were Christians from when we first stepped foot onto the train. it was a really cool experience, but we were all pretty relieved when the train started rolling again.


also, we met this kid who lives here on campus (at least for part of the summer) named Sergey. He's pretty much awesome and has actually moved from the stunned, silent mode to talkative and slightly courteous.

1 John 3:18 Let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth


four square back on campus with sergey --->





Paul "y'all could buy those costumes and look like the three musketeers"
David "more like three muskequeers"


Students Come Tomorrow!!! :)