Week 28

Incase i run out of time and can't write a real email, im starting with this one adventure from this week because it was amazing! This transfer our "cultural event" was to visit "paragova" which up to this point i just heard it to be like a selo (those little village where people grow their gardens/crops) outside of Kiev that has really old dachas (houses). So we rounded up a few members, a less active, and a recent convert and boarded a bus to paragova. Well, to my surprise, paragova, while yes, is a selo, is also a national museum which displays REAL OLD houses from different parts of Ukraine all in one area. We show up, just 30 minutes outside of Kiev, and the feeling and air is so different, blasphemous to say, but both my companion and i were like, this is the Adam ondi amon of Ukraine....just luscious green open space with just a pristine feeling. So the way this "museum" is set up is that different "oblasts" or states, of Ukraine are represented by houses that actually still standing after 250 years or whatever and they picked them up and moved them to this area, paragova, so that we can tour all through these old houses of old, real Ukraine. Its kinda like we look at a few homes and they all kinda look the same, then 100 meters later they said, "okay, now you are in the oblast of chernigsee" and the set of houses and churches look a little different, made out of different materials, based on the natural resources of that area. and they are real homes and churches from about 250+ years ago. Oh my goodness, it was amazing! If there is any place worth traveling to in Ukraine to really see what Ukraine is, it would be this parabova.

I live in the city, but real Ukraine is this...open wheat fields, and windmills! and houses made out of straw, stones, wood, whatever they could find. and then each house was decorated and had "artifacts" from their lives. i say "artifacts" because a lot of these things they still use here in Ukraine-for example i saw a man cutting the grass with a sickle the other day at the school where we run every morning...so funny, but why change your tool if it gets the job done?

i promise i took a hundred more pictures but here are a few to suffice for now. and just google it:paragova ukraine. so cool.

the houses in the selos now are barely a little more modern than this-made out of wood with just open space inside or maybe one bedroom and a kitchen.

so hopefully you can see a more distinct "Ukrainian" culture from this.

I love you all so much :)

Sister Little