Santi Visits + Basketball Camp

From August 8th to 16th our friend Santi (Santiago) was here with us visiting from Spain. We met him for the first time in Spain in May and he and Steve became friends really quickly. He came to help Steve run a basketball camp and to hang out with us. He managed to book a flight straight to Zaporozhye so our first step was finding the Zaporozhye airport, which is waaaaaaaay outside of the city, much further than we thought it would be. Santi said that the landing was the roughest he's ever experienced, due to the haphazardly paved runway but he landed safe and sound!

This is the airport: 

The boys love everyone but it sure helps if you come bearing gifts!

We took him to THE Ukrainian restaurant and the largest market in the city after church on his first full day here. It took a while for August to get passed calling him Santa or Fanta but they became fast friends.

 Monday morning at 11 they started the first day of basketball. Steve rented the gym at a school that we have some contact with and he also asked Garry (from Nicolaipolia) to come out and help because he has a lot of coaching and basketball experience. They had about five guys that came every single day and then there were more that came a few days here and there throughout the week.

 Poor guys though - the entire week was +38 and playing basketball for three hours a day in a non-air conditioned gym that was also +38 degrees was just intense for them. They were exhausted every day.

Santi is from Argentina and offered to cook us some Argentine empanadas for supper one day. It turns out that when he still lived in Argentina he owned a bakery with his Mom so he definitely showed me a thing or two about pastry dough!

 More basketball camp action:

It was a great week and really awesome to have Santi with us. It's always fun for us to have people here with us!!