Week 6

This post isn't really titled correctly, because two thirds of it is actually about this week, but whatevs...

This weekend was our first vacation; we went to the Carpathian mountains and had a blast.

We left Friday night right after teaching and slept on an overnight train. Bright and early Saturday morning we got to Slavsko, rented snow clothes, and drove up to a chair lift. After a long period of time freezing our butts off, we got on the longest ski lift I've ever seen. The ride up took about 20-30 minutes and it was super scary; I thought I was going to fall off and die. Needless to say, I was too scared to take pictures on the way up, but it was absolutely gorgeous and I got lots of photos on the way down.

Once we got to the top of the mountain, we stayed in a cabin there for two nights. We rented skis, snowboards, and sleds, and had crazy adventures that included broken ski lifts, gassy water, fluffy cats, tasty food, roasted marshmallows, and no saunas. For those of you who are curious, I did try snowboarding, but I never even got off my butt, so I'm not very good. And I didn't even get it documented, so you'll just have to believe me. I do have to tell the marshmallow story, however.

What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word 'cabin'? Fire. And what's the first thing you think of when you hear the word 'fire'? Marshmallows. So obviously I made sure to bring my precious bag of marshmallows with us to the cabin. After dinner the first night I got out my bag of marshmallows and Clari got some sticks from outside. And we roasted marshmallows, as well as Starbursts that the brilliant Mackay brought. By this time, the only ones there were our group and the people who own the cabin/hostel, so we got them to try our roasted delectables. It took a lot of coaxing, but they finally tried both. One lady enjoyed the roasted Starburst, but I don't think anyone really liked the marshmallow. It was fun to watch their faces as they tried stuff out, though. In return, we got Rolling Stones played over the loud speakers, metal skewers for roasting, and a piece of bread slathered in salo and caviar. The caviar was not my favorite thing. But a fun memory, nonetheless.

I was so happy when they brought up water without gas

We left the mountain on Monday evening, and spent a few hours in Slavsko waiting for our train home. I got dinner and looked at souvenirs for a while - what did I buy? Home spun yarn, duh. We got back to Kyiv about 7:40 Tuesday morning and we concluded our mountain adventures.