Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Made it.

Friends, made it to the Ukraine! The flights were brutal and sweaty and smelly but we made it in one piece. We flew through DC and Frankfurt. I was in three different capitals of three countries in one day! On the flight to Frankfurt I sat next to an Indian dude who kept blowing his nose loudly and picking his earwax and all sorts of nice things. Our coordinators picked us up from the airport in a crazy green bus and took us to our host fams.
A quick rundown: Kiev is huge. There are tall apartment buildings everywhere. ALL the ladies wear super high heels and there are cute stray dogs galore. It's such a neat place.
My host family is great. They live in one of those apartment buildings on the 15th floor so the view is grand. Their names are Tanya and Andre. They have a four year old daughter named Maria and I'm sharing a room with her. A room that is decked out in Hello Kitty. Yes. The food's a little weird. For dinner we had some quiche (egg pie) with raisins in it...never had sweet eggs before. Also cold hot chocolate, cause my host family just recently moved into their apartment and have no kitchen - no stove or oven or anything! Just a fridge. I don't know how we're going to cook for a couple weeks. I did spot some Kinder chocolate in the fridge though so my hope was restored. One thing that sucks is that my host fam doesn't have a cat. I'm sure you're asking how I'm going to survive the next four months cause of that. Couldn't tell you. BUT, I did see a sign outside of a store this morning with a picture of cat food on it and lo and behold a few feet away under the edge of the building was a little orange kitten. I almost died.
We're at the school where we'll be teaching now. To get here I rode the metro and a bus. A few of us are out cold sleeping on the floor right now. I'm about to join them. Jet lag is seriously the worst thing. I have been too tired and lazy to get my camera out to take a lot of pictures so far, but I'm going to try to do a photo a day type thing so I'll get better! Promise.


XOXO Mal

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Packed.

























Greetings friends! This here blog is going to be kind of a digital scrapbook documenting my adventure in Kiev, Ukraine. If you don't know, I'm going there to teach English to little children for four months. And I'm leaving TOMORROW. Can you believe it?! I can't. But seriously, the real question here is can you believe I fit 4 months worth of my junk into those bags?? Quite the feat. Anyways. I'm leaving at 9:30 in the morning and getting there Tuesday at about 1:00 PM Kiev time. That translates to roughly 20 hours of travel time. Speaks for itself. I'll never be able to stomach another peanut or mini pretzel again by the end. Besides that, I am super excited. I'll try to give an update as soon as I'm there (it feels insane saying that)!

Also, if you'd like a real live postcard filled with love from Ukraine then please give me your address and I'll try my best to get one to you!

До свидания!

XOXO Mal