Last week

Last week in Kyiv, that is! I leave for Georgia on Monday morning. Since it's only Friday evening I have a ton of time to pack all my stuff up, right? Right.

Since next week begins almost a month of holidays for Georgia (25th of December Christmas, New Years, Orthodox Christmas on January 6th, then Old New Years on the 14th) we're starting our outreach with a bunch of parties! There are better ways to be introduced to a new country and culture, but I can't think of them at the moment. The first week or so my team (our leader Kate, Sevinch from Azerbaijan, Elya and Ruslan from Ukraine) will be staying with a family that works with YWAM in Georgia. That's only until we find our own place to stay, hopefully near the center of the city, but a lot of that depends on money.

I've really enjoyed my time in Kyiv. It's a beautiful, unique city with some of the kindest people you'll ever meet. I've gotten to see some awesome sights (feel free to check out my pictures on facebook), gotten to meet some amazing people, learned some valuable lessons, and have had a great 3 months. It's hard to believe that my DTS is half-way over. When I started 6 months seemed like forever, and now I look back and have a very hard time believing that I still don't have 6 months to go- it seems like I'm still just getting started.

Thank you all for coming this far with me, now we're starting a new leg of the journey! Please pray for safe travels and an easy adjustment in Georgia. Love you all, hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in Georgia!

Oh man, I'm sorry I'm so bad at blogging. I just can't keep up.

Next week is my last in Kyiv until I get back from Georgia in March. I'm sad to leave this city that I was just really getting to know. I am getting excited for the outreach to Georgia, though! We leave December 20th, me and my 4 other teammates. We will originally be staying outside of the capitol city of Tblisi until we find an apartment. By January we should be in our own place. I've googled and wiki-ed Tblisi and it looks like a really cool city as well. Poor, though, from my understanding. There are a lot of street children and the YWAM base there works with them very often. There is also another ministry that works with university students that we;ll probably hook up with at some point. We are required to do 50 hours of ministry every week, which means 6 days 'on', 1 day 'off'. It's going to be a long 3 months.

And I never thought I'd say this, but I prefer snow to rain! It was cold and snowy the last week or 2 but suddenly a few days ago the weather warmed up (which I don't mind at all) and now it's pouring buckets (which I mind quite a bit). Turns out that my rain boots aren't rain-proof after all, and that does NOT make me happy. I hate wet feet.

We're finishing up our lecture phase. This week is Bible overview being taught by a couple from the School of Biblical Studies. They are young with 2 toddlers that they bring to class so we can keep an eye on them...or be distracted...I'm not sure. Either way, they are an awesome teaching team and are doing a very creative job of giving us an overview of the Bible.

Speaking of learning, in preparation for our outreach, my team leader Kate has asked us all to learn the Georgian alphabet. Have you ever seen the Georgian alphabet, let alone tried to pronounce it!??! Draw a few scribbles on the page in front of you, make a French phlegm sound combined with a Russian chka sound and you've got it about right. This language is unlike anything any of us have seen. Hoo boy. I just want to be able to tell the bus driver to stop and let me off, that's all. Really. I've got 3 months, right?

Well, dinner is about to start. Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season! One of the YWAM staff was once asked what Christmas is like here. His response? "Like Tuesday," and he got it right! There's not much hype over the holidays here. We have to make our own...which I will be doing Saturday by attempting to bake cookies in our Soviet oven. Wish me luck!