FINALLY here

Hopefully, this will come out making sense and as the work of a jet-lagged maniac. I’ll try to keep this quick and snappy, but there’s a lot of ground to cover to catch everyone up! Currently, I’m staying with my supervisors in Dnepropetrovsk, which is a big city in eastern Ukraine. It’s about two hours from the city I’ll move to. Here are some highlights:

1. I made it! I actually got a good 6 hours of sleep on the trans-Atlantic flight. I had a whole entire row to myself! My layover in Austria was short, but I did make friends with a Ukrainian lady named Olga. We chatted in the airport, and she kind of made me her project for the rest of the trip. She stuck around when she was done so that she could translate for me if I had trouble. She then hung around to help me get my luggage. So helpful! Especially since there were no rolling carts for luggage, and I had four pieces. Ugh…

2. Mike and Linda Ray met me in the airport with flowers. Apparently, Ukrainians love to give flowers for all occasions, so they greeted me the Ukrainian way.

3. I don’t remember just a ton from my first afternoon, but Saturday was very productive. I got some money changed, bought a phone (a Razr that is just like my phone from home…except that everything is in Russian. I’ll have to fix that.), bought a hair straightener (how vain am I?), and got my bearings in a grocery store.


4. I totally thought I’d be fine staying asleep at night, but no. I was wide awake between 11:30 and 2:00 Sunday morning. Of course that would happen the night I needed to get up at 6:45 the next day. Growl…

5. Sunday, we drove almost two hours outside of Dnepropetrovsk to a city of about 25,000-50,000 people. A church that the Rays partner with was having a new building dedication. It was a neat experience. We left the apartment at 7:30, got to the church around 9:15, church started around 9:45, and we wrapped up around 1:20. Being Miss Jet Lag, it was quite a challenge to stay awake, especially when everything was in Russian and I understood approximately 15 words. It was neat, nonetheless. I also found a little kitten that I really wanted to adopt.

A few cultural observations:
1. A woman in the grocery store was wearing an ensemble that looked something like a black bra under a shirt made out of off-black nylons. No one else seemed to notice.

2. Men kiss each other on the mouth in greeting.

3. Um, if it’s really cold outside and you use a bathroom that is housed in a cinderblock-ish building, it will be absolutely freezing when you sit down. You might, in fact, jump right back up immediately. Just a tip.

4. There are still hammer and sickle paraphernalia. Here’s me playing Vanna:Incidentally, this is the name of the city. It’s like a “Welcome to Alabama” sign.

5. There’s a kind of dialect-esque creation that a hybrid of Ukrainian and Russian. It’s called surjik. That won’t be confusing at all while trying to learn language, will it?

Much love to all of you loyal readers. Hopefully, the one of the next updates will be of my apartment. I’ll try to give a tour.