Dresden, Germany

Prague, Czech Republic

Oh yeah, we went to a torture museum. It was so funny!

This is a brewery. Prague is supposedly known for their great beer.

Now you can see why I want to live here. Every street was this beautiful!

Interesting art huh?

I don't really know what this statue was, but everyone was getting a picture here so me and Cassidy decided we better have one too!

Prague was my favorite city for sure! It was absolutely gorgeous! I could have stayed there forever!

Vienna, Austria

Beautiful square in the center of the city.

Balcony where Hitler gave a famous speach.

Everywhere you turn there is gorgeous building after gorgeous building.

Huge cathedral that we visited. It really wasn't dirty, that's just how it looks.

We went to a museum that had all the imperial jewels, clothes and furniture. It was so cool! It's weird to think that a king wore this!

Budapest, Hungary!

George Washington was even popular in Budapest!

Main city square in the center of Budapest.

We felt right at home!

Me, Kendra, Shianne and Megan

Ashley, me, Shianne, and Ellen

Me and Shianne in front of one of the palaces we saw.

Me and Alayna

Budapest was the first city that we went to. Even though it took us 7 HOURS to get across the border, it was well worth it! And we did have some entertainment. While we were waiting to go through customs, the car in the lane next to us got completely torn apart and searched. The guy was trying to smuggle cigarettes and had at least 200 cartons in his car! The city was so pretty and so nice! We only spent one day there, but we got to see lots of things!

First Vacation!

Room on the train. Oh yeah, I slept on that bed.....

SO excited to be going on vacation!

Wonderful toilet on the train! --Mom, you wouldn't have survived.

Getting ready to board the train! We felt like Harry Potter!

Inside the train station!

We got to go on our first vacation the third week in March. We went to Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; Prague, Czech Republic; Dresden, Germany; and Krakow, Poland. It was AMAZING!! I got to see so many amazing things! I absolutely love Europe! It is gorgeous. I have so many pictures of each country, so I am going to make a new post for each one.

St. Sophia's Cathedral

View from the top of the bell tower.

Me and cassidy trying to pick up on some Ukrainian men!

Bell tower that we climbed!

This is St. Sophia's Cathedral. It is the oldest cathedral in Kiev. When the whole city was destroyed, this building was not. They call it the saver of Kiev. It was so pretty inside! There were paintings on the walls that were from the 11th century. It was so cool seeing things that were here 1000 years ago!

Ukrainian Folk Dance Concert

Okay, I am a total loser when it comes to the world of blogging. I am sorry that I have been such a slacker! My goal is to be caught up with all of my ventures of Ukraine by the time I get home, which is in 3 WEEKS!! It's true that time does fly when you're having fun!

This was an Ukrainian Folk Dance concert that we went to back in February. They only come to Kiev one time a year, so we were really lucky that we were here for it! It was really fun and really cool to see Ukraine's traditional dances. They were amazing dancers!

Freakishly Long Escalator!

Okay, so this is just one of the many freakishly long escalators that we have to take to get to the metros. We have timed them a few times and they can take over 2 minutes sometimes! Supposedly it is illegal to take pictures or videos of the metros or anything underground here, so I hope that I don't get thrown in jail!

A Few Teaching Pics!

We made crazy bread faces for a kitchen activity!

Yegor and Dana with their "apple bites"!

Me, Lada, Kate, Olia, Nastia, and Nikita with our "apple bites"!

Dana, Alicia, and Yegor one day in class! Yegor cracks me up; he always has to tell me which one is the mom and which one is the dad, even when we are just using scissors! These kids are so much fun and I am going to miss them a ton when I leave!

Valentine's Continued- The Lock Bridge

After the circus, we went to find the Lock Bridge. It's this old bridge that is covered with thousands of locks. You are supposed to write your and your love's name on the lock, lock it to the bridge, and then throw the keys over the edge! Here are some pics. They are not in the order I wanted them in, but I am too retarded at blogger to figure out how to change them! This is just a picture of the Theater of Dolls that we passed on the way.

Audrey, me, and Shianne getting ready to drop our keys over the edge!

There is my lock; locked on forever! It wouldn't fit around the bar, so I had to lock it to another lock.

The gorgeous view from the Lock Bridge!

Me and Cassidy with our locks. I loved her tinsy little lock; it was so cute!

A Great Valentine's Day!

On Valentine's Day, I was lucky enough to go to the circus for my first time! It was so much fun! They put on an amazing show! There are definately some talented people in the world! Here are some pictures and videos!

This is a video of the opening act of the circus! Later in this same act, they strapped on stilts and were doing to same thing; one guy even did it with ONE stilt! It was so incredible and I was gripping the arm rests too hard to take any videos of it!

Here is a little video of an amazing juggler, although it doesn't do him any justice. At one point during his act he was suspended upside-down from a cable and juggling while swinging around the arena. Talk about talent!!

This one's for the kiddos! There was lots of acts with animals. It was really fun to watch, but smelled like highly concentrated urine! Yuck!

2 ladies in tight costumes with whips, 3 very large tigers, 2 rings of fire. Enough said.

This one is especially for Regy. Now I can understand a little bit better what he means when he says he is "cowboying".

The Dolphin Show!

Last Tuesday night, me, my host family, and a couple friends went to a dolphin show. It was in this random tent on the corner of a street somewhere in downtown Kiev. It was really fun and probably something you couldn't find in America! There was a quite a few different acts, including: a seal, a walrus, juggling pirates, trapeze artists, an aquarium display, and of course the dolphins! Here's a few pics!

This was an eel that was HUGE! It was really digusting looking. Lena told me how wonderful their meat is. I can't imagine eating something like this! YUCK!


Yes, this a turtle with an elephant nose. This isn't the best picture, but it was the ugliest turtle I have ever seen.. Poor fella!


Me, Kenda (my right), and Shianne (my left) standing in front of a shark's mouth!


Me, Shianne, and Kendra in front of the dolphin posters!


Here is a little video of the dolphins. Sorry it's not the best quality, but hopefully you can tell what it is! I thought the little kids might like to see!

A Fun Weekend!

If you look really closely, you can see the man in the middle set of windows playing the bells. The chiming starts at 4:30 and goes for 30 minutes straight, letting people know that church will begin at 5:00. The music he played was incredible and watching him do it was even more so! I'm sure he must have some killer arms! Maybe we should take up bell chiming for the "Biggest Loser" contest??


This was outside one of the cathedrals that we visited. They are such beautiful buildings! We got to attend an Orthodox service. It was just like the movies! The man dressed in golden robes, candle-lit room, real life monks! It was pretty awesome, but I don't think that I could stand for 3 solid hours of church!


This was outside the monk caves that we visited. There are monks that still practice in the caves, so I couldn't take any pictures inside, but it was really neat! There are a lot of people who had some part in the church that are buried there. They say one of the "magical" things about these caves are that there needs to be no preparation done to the mummies before they are put into their glass cases. No embalming or anything. It was kinda creepy that we were walking through caves with dead people in glass boxes surrounding us. Most of them had their hand exposed and were all decaying and rotting. It was awesome! But I think the thing I was most afraid of was lighting someone else on fire with my little candle we had to hold!

This was just a pretty picture of the cathedrals we went to!