Dance dance dance!!

This last Saturday was a fun one! We started the day off with going to the circus! I couldn't stop laughing and ahhing the whole time, the word whoa was common one I said. The only thing that wasn't fun to watch was when this guy (who looked like a wizard-white long hair and a robe...) was whipping the camels! I've never heard camels yelp out in pain! It was so sad! And they were doing what they were supposed to! The tigers were awesome too! I think what I liked most at the circus were the things that groups of people were doing. We saw some pretty cool dances. And the "hard core bouncers" (I'm not sure what they were called). They were a group of guys and one girl dressed up in leather and they were bouncing on these big tire things. AND jump roping with chains while bouncing!

After the circus I went with Sally to a performance that her host sister was in. It was a performance of traditional Ukrainian folk dances. Her sister was one of the dancers when they had the ballet part. So this group of about 15 guys and 15 girls did the folk dances and then they would have different groups do some things inbetween their songs. All the folk dances seemed to have a theme and since we couldn't understand the announcer I made up my own theme. I think the theme would be "guy likes girl". It was so funny! Mostly all the dances had a little story to them and they were all about the guys trying to impress the girls. They were amazing and the costumes looked awesome!

Then we ended the Saturday by going to a young single adult dance at the institute! It was soviet themed so they decorated the place with communist posters and gave away canned food for the prizes if you won a game! We didn't understand anything though so just sat in the back and pretended we knew what was going on with the games. The dancing was a blast though and they're were a lot of Ukrainians that came! We even started a dance with the electric slide. We did it to some other song and after it ended one of the guys asked a girl in our group if it was a "cowboy dance". It was probably one of my favorite days here in Kiev!

Places around Kiev...

Here is a must see in Kiev. St. Sophia's cathedral. It's from the 6th century and so beautiful. It was really neat to go inside but unfortunately we couldn't take pictures of the inside. This is a view from the tower that we had to walk up. Gotta love those stairs!

The blue church is St. Michaels which is right across from Sophia's.



Another great place we went to was Lavra. At a certain time everyday they play the bells. It was awesome.







One of my favorite places in Kiev: The Temple!!
We went here one Sunday afternoon on a beautiful day. It won't be finishe until 2010 and I can't wait to see it then (although it will most likely be fromd pictures).


Just recently we went to Paragova. It's a huge outdoor museum. My favorite things were the windmills. It was beautiful with the sun starting to set. We ran into Karli and Breanne with their host family and warmed up by playing soccer with them. It was great fun. My team won thanks to Stas and his Dad!

Kiev is great!

I'm starting a blog. I'm not sure how well this will go but I think it will be more for my benefit then for others. But I hope you enjoy it anyway. I regret not starting it when I first got to Ukraine as I only have 5 more weeks! I can't believe how fast time has gone.

So now I'm going to go back in time. Here is a picture of our first full day here in Kiev. This is a statue of Kristina, the symbol of Ukraine. They close the street on the weekends. It's the busiest street here so it's kinda cool. It's called Kreshatik. It's where the parties at on the weekends. There are a lot of dancing people. The break dancing is quite popular. I've really enjoyed living here in Kiev. It's been quite the experience. The people are amazing! It's also been so much fun to see the kids from both schools that my teachers teach in. They are too funny!
So there's my update for now. I'll update more later! And Happy Birthday Missy!!!