Garden Pictures and "Who's the Kindest Country?"

The Garden on Our Balcony

David's garden on our balcony has been taking off. We've been enjoying lettuce these last couple weeks and it's still producing! His green onions are also about ready to be uprooted. He continues to cut off the tops of the cherry tomatoes because they're growing so much and this last week they started flowering, so we'll be seeing little green tomatoes soon! He started 12 cherry tomato plants, thinking they wouldn't all grow, but they did. So the Hindmans and our language teacher, Yelena, got several plants from us that they're continuing to grow. He's also growing cilantro, habanero peppers, and jalapeno peppers. We're so grateful to have our balcony to grow food on, and I'm grateful for a husband who is taking such good care of it all!











"новая Зеландия - страна добряков"


Our language teacher brought us an article from our local Kharkov newspaper Today this last week. The title is "New Zealand - Kindest Country." You can guess why she brought it our way! Just in case you're wondering: the United States was rated #83 in 149 countries, Ukraine was rated #82, and Russia was rated #136. They are pretty happy they are rated "kinder and more loving" than the United States. We were excited New Zealand has a good reputation that maybe we can piggy-back on here in Ukraine!

Dolphins, Friends, and Russian Songs

Last weekend Brandon and Katie had a friend come up from Mariupol. Sasha came on the train early Saturday morning. He spent all day on Saturday with our team and then left with Brandon and Katie on Sunday evening.

A couple weeks ago a new outdoor dolphinarium opened up in the main park in town. Sasha was a good excuse for all of us to go see the show together. Lucy was still under the weather, so David and I offered to keep Canaan overnight. We picked him up and headed to meet the Hindmans, Prices, and Sasha at the show. It was great and thoroughly entertaining! The show included 4 sea lions, and 4 dolphins performing their best. Two of the dolphins gave up halfway through their routine and their poor trainer left them to swim around, misbehaving, which was quite comical. Who would have guessed we'd have a dolphinarium in Kharkov, Ukraine?!

On Sunday our whole team (minus Lucy and Max since Lucy was still sick) went to XT3 (Hetezay) to worship with the congregation out there. The service is in Russian, so David and I struggle to understand little fragments of what they are saying. Nevertheless, it's encouraging and we're all worshipping the Lord together.


Later in the afternoon, after Dougle and Lucy fed us all enchiladas, we all sang together. Sasha brought songbooks up from Mariupol for us to use and then led us all in singing. It was really good to sing together in Russian, even though we weren't perfect at it, sometimes stumbling over the words and/or tune. In 2002, Brandon met Sasha in Mariupol when he was an AIM student. Brandon worked with him while he was in AIM and Sasha became a Christian. When Brandon and Katie went back to Mariupol again in 2007-2008, they worked with Sasha more, training him to be one of the leaders in the youth group. Today, Sasha is helping "train" us in Russian songs-- what a neat story. We pray stories like Sasha's will come out of the work we'll be a part of here. We know God has amazing plans for the Sashas, Natashas, and Nicolays here in Kharkov!

During our singing together, Brandon and Sasha even taught us the Russian version of "The Sea of Galilee" so I thought I'd share it with you here.

It's Been Awhile!

June is flying by around here! We are enjoying hotter summer days (especially hot for our teammates who don't have air conditioning), but we're loving the sun and enjoying all the time we're getting outside. There's something about summer that brings the Ukrainians to life and it's wonderful to be a part of it.

Team Time
These last two weeks we've had our teammates, Brandon and Katie Price, here in Kharkov with us. They left yesterday to go down south to visit Mariupol, Ukraine (to the congregation they worked with for several years). On Thursday, our whole team will travel down to Mariupol and spend the weekend with them. It will be good to go see a different part of Ukraine, meet other Christians, and get to know the people who Brandon and Katie call their family. After our time with them, we'll all come back to Kharkov, making a day stop in Donetsk, Ukraine to register visas and inquire about car registration. We hope to get a car pretty soon, we just need to figure out how to put it in our name.

Our Time with the Prices
We were blessed to have Brandon and Katie stay with us for the first week of their visit here. During that time we really got to know each other better. David and I are very excited to have another couple around our age coming here. They also attended our language classes during the week and our teacher Yelena took right to them. Katie also taught me how to make вареники [ver-en-ik-y], a Ukrainian pasta dish. Вареники can be filled with many things, but we filled ours with potatoes and cheese, then another batch with berries. You boil them on the stove for just a few minutes, then serve them warm with sour cream. Even the berry filled ones are served with sour cream (with a little sugar) on top. It was delicious!


Scouting the City
For the last couple weeks we've been walking around different parts of the city. We enjoy where we're living now (the center), but all hope to move to a different part of the city this next year. In the center, we feel like we're in an apartment building that is mostly surrounded by businesses. We hope to find a place that has a "neighborhood" atmosphere where we can become a part of a community. So, our team walked around four different areas of the city we were interested in, and two of them appealed to us all, so that is great. I'm including some pictures from our walk. We wondered how strange we must look to people-- 8 Americans and their kids walking around!

Care Package!
I also wanted to mention we received a care package from Legacy a couple weeks ago!! Denyce and Lucy both came "shopping" in my pantry as well to grab a few goodies. It's so nice to have fun foods around. The box contained food, books, fun toys, lotions, and medicine too. The medicine came just in time as Lucy has been sick with a horrible head cold and I got a minor version of it as well... it was nice to have American medicine we already know and trust on hand!



I'll stop writing so this post doesn't become too long. I still have a few more things to share, so I'll be posting again soon in a couple days. I did want to mention our teammate Brandon's blog. He's posting a picture a day and so far they've all been of their trip to Ukraine. Most of the pictures are common things we see around here, he just does a great job capturing it. His site is: brandonprice.posterous.com

Sharing About Ukraine

It's been a little while since our last post, so I thought I would write a few things I've been meaning to write for a while now. David still isn't letting me take pictures of his garden until the peppers start to grow. One peaked out of the soil yesterday, so I'm hoping to have pictures for you next week! But here are other random thoughts and bits of information about us or the culture here that I think you'll enjoy reading about.

Wedding Ring Finger
When we moved here in October, David and I switched our wedding rings from our left hand to our right hand. Our teammates had let us know before we came that was where Russians and Ukrainians wear their wedding bands. Last week our teacher enlightened us more. In Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus married couples wear their wedding bands on their right ring finger. If they wear the wedding band on their left hand it means their spouse is deceased, they are separated from their spouse, or they are divorced. Needless to say, I'm happy we had our rings on the right hand and we'll be keeping them there for the next 5 1/2 years!

Homemade Vanilla
As some of you know, we cannot find liquid vanilla extract/flavoring here in Ukraine. Up to this point our friends have brought it to us or sent it to us. Since we make almost everything from scratch, we go through vanilla fast. About a month ago, our friend from Legacy, Kipi, wrote a blog post about how she was making homemade vanilla. Right now I have four 70oml jars of vanilla in-the-making (it takes 3-6 months to diffuse the vanilla beans into the vodka). Here's a picture of how three of them are turning out. Needless to say, I'm very happy we found this recipe and I can't wait to try it out!
The vanilla on the far left is just starting (Day 1), next to it is vanilla on Day 2, and on the far right is the vanilla after 3 weeks. My first batch will be at the 3 month mark on July 31st. But, I'm hoping I'll be able to let it go 6 months. I'll let you know how it goes!

Shopping in the Outdoor Market
In my post about the items in our kitchen, I mentioned we had been talking to our language teacher about where she buys food. She does not trust the meat or milk products at the supermarkets and prefers produce from the outdoor market as well. Well, a couple weeks ago Denyce and I bought some produce and honey from some people on the street who have stands set up almost every day. It was very good in quality and yesterday we ventured out again, this time to a larger outdoor market to pick up some produce. There were numerous stands of people selling their produce. A lot of it was very fresh, we just had to keep your eye out for the best-looking stuff. They even offer samples, so that is good (although sometimes the sampling looks less than sanitary, so I just buy it, hoping it will be good). Sometimes the produce is washed and sometimes it isn't. If it's washed, it's usually more expensive. But if you don't buy it washed your run the risk of the produce being moldy and bad (the dirt covers a multitude of blemishes). Most of the produce is cheaper in the outdoor market and the things that are in season taste much better. Since summer is here, the produce will only get better as well. Our language teacher is keeping us in the loop of when to buy Ukrainian grown products as many of their imported goods aren't very tasty. Because we went yesterday (not on the weekend), they didn't have the meat out, so I'm planning to go back tomorrow (hopefully with our language teacher so she can show me who to buy meat from) to get that. We'll probably stick to buying our milk products at the grocery store, though.


The Russian Keyboard
Here's a picture (click on it to enlarge it) of our keyboard with Russian letter stickers on it. The red letters are Russian, blue are English. Even with the color differences, it's hard to type in Russian, but we're getting better with practice.


A New View
Here are some pictures of what we see out our balcony and windows. The pictures on the left were taken a couple months ago (either February or March) when we were in winter and the pictures on the right were taken today as we're in spring. I chose the prettier pictures of winter (the ones with snow on the ground), but still, we're glad the grey is gone for a while!