It's Very Cold Out There Folks

February 13, 2011
I was very excited to receive a package from my family this week! They sent me some candy and other items that I needed. They also included little letters to me. Thank you family for being so supportive! It definitely made my whole week =) I wouldn't mind if more are sent, but its up to you.  People always questioned why I decided to choose Ukraine over going to China or Mexico. My reply was always because I wanted to go to a big city. They then came back with "well isn't it really cold there" to which my reply was well duh! "Don't you hate the cold?" oh ya...
I don't think I quite realized what I got myself into when I signed up to come here. I think the weather was mocking us the first week we got here because it was actually pretty nice out and I just kept thinking 'wow this weather is not any worse than it is in Idaho! Maybe people were just kidding about how cold it gets.  Well this last weekend proved me wrong. It was absolutely FREEZING outside. Snow+wind=not my friend. Although the weather was awful for some crazy reason we decided to trek through it. On Saturday we celebrated Rockie and Ameri's birthdays and Jennii's half birthday by going out to eat at TGI Fridays! It was so hard to choose what to order because everything looked so 
good but I ended up ordering shrimp and fries! It was delectable! And just to 
prove that I loved it, I took a picture of my finished plate! Yep I finished my whole plate; it was a miracle. Oh and to make it even more unbelievable I ordered dessert as well! Yep I'm definitely learning to eat a lot more here! The waiters even sang to the birthday girls in Russian! It was pretty cool. We decided to make that our 'birthday restaurant' while we're here. The only hard part of the whole lunch was the fact that all of our orders were on one receipt and they were all in Russian, so figuring out who had what and how much it cost was interesting. I bet the people at the restaurant were just laughing at us because it seriously took like 20 minutes to figure out the bill. Afterwards we met up with our native coordinator Tanya. She took us on a tour through a cathedral, St. Sofia's. This is the one that I mentioned earlier that was 1,000 years old! It was pretty neat because a lot of the paintings have survived this whole time and are still in good condition! After going through the cathedral we went into the bell tower! Keep in mind that it was snowy, windy, and freezing and we were climbing slippery stairs up to the top of this tower. It was quite the adventure. But once we reached the top we were able to see out over Kyiv and it was so pretty! I'm sure it will be even more beautiful when the weather is nicer out. =) After being wind blown we headed over to Brother Roberts house for a ward social/potluck. They have the most beautiful house! Sister Roberts made us tacos and they were so delicious! We were able to just eat, hangout, and play Rock Band! I didn't realize how much I miss playing the Wii! It was so much fun. However, I was pretty bummed because for some reason I could not pass a song on expert on the guitar... I guess I'm a little rusty. The best part of the night was when 4 of the men in our ward that are married in their late 20's wanted to have a 'band off' against ILP. We chose a few songs and then jammed it out and the team with the highest points won that round. They wanted to do best 2 out of 3. Ameri was our drummer, Auvi was our guitarist, I was the vocalist, and another girl (i'm so bad with names) was our bass. Well we kicked their trash the first two rounds so they decided to make it best 5 out of 6. We continued to kick their butts and win but even so it was so entertaining to watch these guys jam out to the songs and dance around! =)