Lately

 Last Monday for supper club we went to another area of the city for a bonfire with the kids. There was a team here from America here that wanted to get together with the kids so we roasted wieners, made potatoes in the fire (with salo - a Ukrainian specialty which is rendered pig fat) and had marshmallows that were provided by the American team - they don't exist here and most Ukrainians have never had or seen them. 

A favourite youth activity - playing volleyball in a circle

As you can tell from my face the fire was reeeally hot and the sticks for roasting were reeeally short!! 

 Last Tuesday Steve took the overnight train to Kiev where our friends Bobi and Justin arrived on Wednesday. They took the Wednesday overnight train back to Zaporozhye and arrived early Thursday morning. We had a few beautiful days for them to have an easy transition from Spain to Ukraine weather (+20 and sunny!) but since the weekend it has been colder and cloudy. We've taken them to the market, the usual places we go (New Hope church, Young Life, supper club on Monday, Melrose for lunch) and on Tuesday we did an excursion to Khortitza island. We brought Marina along and she has a really good camera so she took some pictures for us. We had a picnic and went to the museum. 

Us with the Cossack fortress in the background. 

I was excited that the museum now has descriptions in English! I find the museum itself to be really well done and really interesting as far as museums go - I'd say one of the better ones I've been to in my lifetime. 

Explaining anchors and cannonballs to Dez. 

It turns out that Bobi is quite fluent in Russian (she's from the Czech Republic and learned Russian in school) and she's quite an asset when we're out and about even though we still try our hardest to speak as much as possible. Both Bobi and Justin have been a breath of fresh air for us - we've come up with a bunch of outdoor projects we want to tackle once the weather warms back up again and we're excited to get them as involved as possible with the things we already have on the go. We took them to school 25 last Friday and we started with a new class who is quite musical and were told by the teacher that we were to prepare a song to sing for the next week! Fortunately...or maybe unfortunately??? we think that class has been canceled for us tomorrow but maybe by next week we can get our hands on a guitar for both Bobi and Justin to play.