Ukrainian Adventures: The Dentist

Steve and I have been to the dentist once since being married........we've been married for 12 years. So in July after some long-lasting tooth pain, Steve decided that it was time to try out a dentist here. Dental tourism is a for real thing - dentistry in Ukraine is really good and really really cheap so people from all over Europe have been known to come here to get their teeth done. So with Marina's help we found a dentist that is conveniently located directly across the street from our apartment. Steve went first for a cleaning and four fillings and then he lovingly booked me an appointment for a cleaning, much to my chagrin. I really really really dislike the dentist. But it was fine, although I also needed two fillings so I did have to go back a second time. I've never had a filling so I can't compare the two but it was really professional and modern which made me happy. 

My super awesome goggles:

They basically sand-blasted my teeth for the cleaning. I remember in Canada they always use that circular tool with some kind of a sand paste and I have no idea if that's still what they do, but they just went ahead and used a high-pressure sand blaster and man....were my teeth CLEAN.

It was a great experience and soooooo cheap.....so if anyone has some dental issues.....it's probably cheaper to fly here, stay for a week, see the dentist and then fly home!! 

#JustYouth Summer Grand Finale: Beach Party

We teamed up with Real School and Young Life to throw a beach party to end our summer of events. 

We served a ton of watermelon and iced tea.

We rented a generator and had music and later some dancing games on a big screen.

Slip and slide:

Steve getting a bucket of water in the face at the end of the slip and slide courtesy of our friend Tolik:

Young Life leaders planned a few water games (including 500 water balloons that Steve and I spent all afternoon filling up with help from Yegor and Marina).

Steve spoke about going back to school and having a fresh start in school and in life: 

As we waited for the sun to set so that we could use the screen there were games of volleyball and ultimate frisbee.

It finally got dark enough to use the screen so we played the game for about 20 minutes and the generator ran out of gas!! I thought someone was supposed to be in charge of that because Steve and I were under the impression that we were going to be staying and partying until 10 p.m or later but at this point we were told that whoever rented the generator, rented it for four hours worth of time/gas. Awesome.

Soooooooo as it is now illegal to have open fires on the beach, we packed up just as it was starting to get dark and headed home. Everyone who wanted to congregated at Rainbow Park to hang out there for longer so Steve dropped the boys and I off at home and then headed over there to meet up with people. It was a little disappointing but the time we did have was really fun and we had a lot of teenagers come so in the end, it was a good way to wrap up our busy summer season.

Summer Activities: OLYMPICS

Probably our best, most fun idea of the entire summer but yet the most poorly attended event.....it's frustrating when that happens but we still had a blast with the people who came! In order to celebrate the Olympics that no one here seemed to care about despite the fact that Zaporozhye Oblast (province) had ELEVEN athletes there!! So we planned Olympic events - some real, some made-up, some ridiculous, all Ukraine versus Canada...or mainly just Steve......Ukraine versus Steve. 

But first, decorations!

Steve's hand-crafted Canadian flag aaaaaand a Ukrainian flag that was $2 at the grocery store.

Team Canada: 

Team Ukraine: 

After the opening ceremonies of singing our respective anthems, we started our events. 

Event one: the farthest soccer goal: 

The 100 meter race that our friend Igor destroyed: 

 Throwing an American football through a target: 

 There were three of us holding hula hoops as targets:

Farther baseball hit:

We found this Mondetta Canada sweater at a second hand store seriously THE DAY BEFORE the Olympics so obviously we bought it (it was $3!!!) and Steve wore it even though it was +36 that day!

Fastest lap around the track...only three of them actually made it around the entire track!!

The fastest 50 meters without dropping a plastic cup and fork off a plastic plate - I LOST!!! Boo!!

We sang some sort of song when presenting medals (canning lids with a string, so professional) and it always just turned into us singing the Star Wars theme song, ha ha. 

The long jump: 

Shooting targets with a Nerf gun: 

In the end, it was a sad day for Canada. We just couldn't make it out on top, losing three medals to five. The Ukrainian team sang their anthem in victory: 

Steve and his hard-fought three medals...actually, they were blow-out wins in baseball, American football throwing and Nerf gun shooting. 

The rivalry continues.......

Summer Activities: Beach with Real School

We switched our beach day from last Friday to Thursday (August 18th) because Young Life planned a camping trip for the Friday evening and Steve wanted to take as many people with him there as he could. Also Real School was meeting at the beach on Thursday so we just grouped together, played lots of volleyball and enjoyed some watermelon. 

Summer Activities: English in the Park

These are really late because when we came home from the mountains, our friend and photographer Marina came home from the sea to find that her apartment had been robbed while she was gone. So along with other important things her laptop was stolen and therefore, she can no longer send us pictures but we have to take her SD card from her camera and put them on our computer. SO. Pray for her in that situation - the police seemed really uncaring and hopeless right from the beginning so it's highly unlikely that she'll get anything back. 

So - these are from August 17, English in the park. 

The sky was getting darker and darker but we stayed, played Taboo and then went for a walk.

We walked a ways from the park (and our car) and then saw a lovely rainbow and decided to turn back. Well within a few meters of walking back, it started absolutely POURING. We ran towards the car but it was so far away that eventually we gave up and just enjoyed walking in the rain.