So back to the European escapade. The next morning I had nothing to do, so one of our translators Ira (pronouced eara) took me shopping. It went pretty well. I found a few souveniers. The thing I was the most impressed with, was their jewelry. In thier version of a department store, they had a stand with tons of sparkly jewelry. It was so pretty, and almost everything was under $10. I didn't buy much the first day, but I wish I had, because I never got back. That night, we headed over to the same methodist church, and my aunt taught the second half of the Esther bible study. That night I watched the pastors two children, and one of the children from Comanitza(another methodist church is here, we visited it later.) They were adorable. Little Abigail was not quite 1, Martin was about 3, and Rubin was maybe 5-6. They played really well together, and really liked the toys I brought. (Martin loves hotwheels cars. He called them Malenchy Machencas which is spelled all wrong but means small car in Russian) When we were going home that night, we saw a motorcycle accident, and it was obviously recent, because there was a guy laying dead on the road, they hadn't even covered him yet. It was pretty disturbing.
In Ukraine the roads are aweful. The government doesn't have the money to fix them, so they don't. The cars are bad too, because no-one can afford nice ones, so they all have that horrible old car gas fume, and none of them have seat belts. To top it all off, Ukrainians are crazy drivers. Their highways are two lane, and they will pass cars even where there are cars coming the other way. It's pretty scary. I was very glad to get back to the US where I had my seatbelt.
Most of our days went like this, one day we visited Gypsy villages all day. The first one was crazy. As soon as we got there, we attracted a following, and my aunt gave me her camera to take some picutres while we were there. So I started doing that. Now in gypsy villages everyone is very poor, and none of them can afford cameras, so they ask anyone with a camera to take their picture. So after the adults went into their church, (which had a dirt floor, and a set on roof) I was mobbed by the younger people, and took more pictures than you would believe. Then we tried to get the children to play with us, and Christine was upset because at the beginning some of the toys dissapeared, which was to be expected, because in thier culture stealing is ok as long as you don't get caught. We had plannd for this, and only brought some of the toys we had to this village so we would have more for the next one. After our attempts at games failed they began pulling the grapes off of trees and throwing them at each other. We finally (with big help from Ira) got them to sit down, and sing. They really enjoyed this. I was surprised. It was really nice.
The second village was much more calm, it was a more suburban village, and we didn't have any children to take care of.
Another day we visited The boys and girls orphanages. These aren't technically orphanages, they are for children who were in orphanages, and were too old to stay, but not ready to be on thier own. So they set up these sort of transition homes, so that they don't end up begging, or in prostitution. The boys home as a little bit overwhelming. There were probably amlmost ten boys, and they were wild. But apparently they had settled down quite a bit from before. The girls house was really nice. They had a big house for them to live in, and then a gigantic yard, with farm animals, fileds, huge gardens, and a bunch or cherry trees, with some realy good cherries on them. We were there when they were ripe. Those were some of the best cherries I've ever had.
One of the girls at the girls house befriended me, and before we left she gave me her teddy bear. I couldn't belive it. That was probably one of the only things she had, and she gave it to me. I had a really hard time accepting it, but she would have been really insulted if I hadn't.
This is getting really long, and I'm tired of typing, so I'm going to wrap it up for now. I'll wirte more later. Miss you all.