weeks update

as my time in Kiev winds down it's hard to believe I only have two weeks left in this town. I have fallen in love with my family, the kids I teach, the culture, and the Russian language. I have gained a love for different languages and want to keep up learning more languages and expanding on them. Because I travel so much at this time in my life the need for me to know these languages is high. my fear is that I will lose them once I don't need them. Someday I want to find a job that I can use them or keep on traveling. I have worked this hard to learn them I want to keep them and learn more. starting with French and moving back to Russian. I have gotten the Russian stare down! it only took me 4 months but I can do it, kind of. I love the culture here and how the people react to things differently. people are interesting, that's all I can say.

this week was hard getting back into teaching, well the first two days where kind of hard. after the vacation I still had the vacation mind set. it was hard to focus and start to teach again and have my mind in the lessons I was teaching. Although I am starting to get back into it. The time started to speed by again as I explored the city before school, then taught, and then went home for the night to spend time with my family. This weeks highlights include dancing withhold men in metros, buying shoes from a street vender, cooking party at Marilee's house (because her host family was out of town), and last but not least party with other Americans.

Dancing was amazing it was totally unexpected too. we were going to go out for pizza and outside of this metro on the red line there was a live band playing Ukrainian folk music and old people dancing. I watched for a little and tried to dance by myself to understand their footwork but eventually an old man came up and asked me to dance. he knew no English but yet it was still cute that he asked me to dance. he showed me dance moves and how to do the steps right. we didn't stay every long dancing though and I was a bit sad because of it. I was grateful that we did spend at least 45 minutes there because it was amazing.

At Marilee's we cooked muffins, brownies and pizza! it was great because there was a couple other people over so it was like a small party. Camden came over and so did Brendon, and Alysha. we just joked around and cooked. because we were the only people in the flat it felt like it was Marilee's place and she owned it. it felt like we really lived in Kiev and we were locals and we were here to stay. the friends didn't stay super late, till 10? I stayed though because it was just easier to spend the night at her place.

I got Toms at a street vender! I haven't used them much but they are super comfortable! I plan on using them once I get back to the states. I'm sure I'll use them around campus.

it's sad to think that I'll have to get back to boring America soon. honestly I don't want to think about that. there is a part of me that is accepting of going home but then there is a part of me that says I'll go home kicking and screaming. I want to keep on traveling the rest of my life. so I plan on doing just that.