ukraine. five years ago.

this morning i heard a story on npr about the upcoming 25th anniversary of the chernobyl disaster.

which means it was five years ago that my mom and i traveled to ukraine to see my little brother trevor.  we saw the sights, traveled all over, met the kindest people and celebrated 2945692 ukrainian holidays before bringing him home from his mission.

we visited six cities - chernihiv, cherkassy, nikolaev, kiev, illischivsk, and odessa. 

traveled mostly by marshrutka {a small bus that travels between towns too close together to travel by train.... but too far away for a taxi} but also took a few over-night train rides.  international travel is such an adventure... in a community-squatting-toilet-on-a-moving-train kind of way.

the people were the best part.  all of our time was spent with the youth of the church in each city. sight-seeing by day, experimental dinner invitation by night, and american movie parties with the kids in the hotel everywhere in between.  they were all so sweet... faithful and diligent in their worship despite opposition and negativity, even from the people they love. 

we spent over two weeks in ukraine.  through all our planning, nothing i could do convinced my brother to shorten our ukraine time a little so we could travel to russia to see what i thought were the "real sights" like the hermitage in st. petersburg, etc.  i was going to chalk this up to my one and only visit to eastern europe and i felt like i had a lot of ground to cover in one trip.  honestly, ukraine doesn't have any world famous sights to see.  nothing people travel from all over the world to lay their eyes on.  but no, no.  trevor insisted we visit every city... and meet every family he cared for.

five years later - i think he made the right decision.  they were the kindest, most humble and gracious people.

sometimes i cock my head and think "i went to ukraine... who goes to ukraine?!"

who goes to ukraine?

i do.

i even dyed my hair black in ukraine.... for, like, 35 hryvnia... $7

gold domes.

neglected buildings... there's an inkling of grand-ness in there.  dang soviet union.

the whole place could use a power wash.

more gold domes.

apartment living... line drying on the vines.

seems like every city had a giant statue of their most famous poet. 

wwii memorials.  everywhere.

more wwii memorials.

my favorite wwii memorial of them all.

train station.

a rally/march in odessa.

i think i remember my little brother saying they were communists, but i'd hate to speak out of turn and be corrected by a russian speaker who can read the words on their banner.

restaurant.

the black sea.

easter cake.

two things i'll always remember about ukraine:

1.  the restaurant.  if you look at the letters in the cyrillic alphabet, the letters used to spell r-e-s-t-a-u-r-a-n-t are ресторан.  my english brain reads those letters as P-E-C-T-O-P-A-H.  my mom and i wandered all around ukraine for a week before we realized that a "pectopah" is a restaurant.  makes sense, i guess.  if the p's sound like r's and the c's sound like s's and the h's sound like n's.... the pectopah is a "restoran".... maybe?  in our family, we still call restaurants pectopahs.  funny.

2.  easter cake.  we celebrated easter in ukriane.  besides all the stores being closed for three days, we celebrated easter with the gracious offerings of easter cake from every person we met.  easter cake is big.  it's dry... and there's sprinkles on top.  if we were lucky, there was a little icing.  but it was definitely big and really really dry.  we were offered a teeny tiny cup of tea..... and then another piece of cake.  and we'd get a bonus cake - a whole cake! - to take with us when we left.  ohmygosh, we ate so much cake.  dry, drrrrryyyy, huge pieces of cake.  i hate easter cake. 

oh, and then - of course - there was the funny old guy in kiev who was just looking out for my baby maker....

ukraine gave me my inaugural stamp in my passport.  thank you, ukraine!

who goes to ukraine?!