Elevator Adventure

I officially have had my first "stuck in the elevator" experience here in Ukraine! Two guys from English club and myself got on the small elevator on the first floor. Another lady (in her bathrobe) also hopped on and we got about 2 floors up before it shut down in between the 2nd and 3rd floor. We were able to pry the door open and jump down onto the 2nd floor and take the other one. It was fun and relatively short! Usually it's about a half hour before someone comes and gets you out.

In a Foreign Land

I'm not exactly a tourist but can relate. A few quotes from Chesterton, Emerson, and finally David Foster Wallace:

As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it’s only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let’s-look-honestly-at-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourism is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way—hostile to my fantasy of being a real individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. (Coming up is the part that my companions find especially unhappy and repellent, a sure way to spoil the fun of vacation travel:) To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.

(From: Andrew Sullivan)

Does Science Disprove Religion?

Here's an article by Stanley Fish discussing the science vs. faith argument some people use as their explanation for rejecting religion or faith. It's deeply interesting and there is truth in what he says.

Pinky Toe

Odds and Ends

Yesterday officially began our two weeks without hot water for the summer. They need to clean the hot water pipes in our region of the city, but we still have cold water which is good! We're also hosting a girl on Saturday night who is coming through Kiev on her way back home from a vision trip in L'viv. Besides that, Life is becoming normal here in Kiev.

V-E Day and the Aviation Museum

So, today we got the chance to go with some friends to this aviation museum near our flat. Two of our friends work there as aircraft mechanics so we got to learn all about Russian planes! Over here they celebrate V-E Day tomorrow instead of today and we hear there might be an airshow going down tomorrow. I'll keep my fingers crossed...

Russian built Tu-95 "Bear" is a strategic long-range bomber. Big, cool, and 15,000 lbs of thrust in each engine

Anastra "Antrasal" Reconnaissance Aircraft built in 1917-18 in Odessa

They even had a re-enactment with the Soviet soldiers defeating the Fascists!

Mig-31

Be-12 Anti-sub amphibious Soviet Aircraft. Very cool and built in Ukraine

Everyone who went with the engines of an IL-18 behind us

Outside the entrance to the museum

Hmmm....

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

Playing chess in the park

Think you're good at chess? Come to Kiev and see how good you are. Probably a couple hundred guys playing chess in a park. It's fun to watch and I think this is a national pasttime in this part of the world.

Area Retreat

Sorry for not posting for so long. We didn't have access to internet where we were staying at the MTW Area Retreat in Spain. Every 4 years MTW plans a retreat for all the missionaries from Africa, Europe, and Enterprise. Ray Cortese, a Pastor in Florida, and Paul Kooistra were the speakers and it was a wonderful time of fellowship and encouragement. It was especially fun for us to re-connect with some friends we met at MTW training events while preparing to come to Ukraine.

Also, here's a shout out to Laura Libassi's mom! Thanks for reading our blog!

So we came home after our trip and Spring has officially arrived in Kiev. Everything was so green and wonderful. These pics are from along the street out in front of our apartment building.