First, let me explain…



As I prepare to create this blog post, I am already sensing that this might turn out to be one of the longest posts ever made. Therefore, before beginning, I just wanted to explain a few things. While a reason I created this blog was to keep my family and friends updated about my going-ons in Russia this semester, my main goal in this has always been for personal journaling purposes: hence, the (at times) extreme wordiness. So, while I’m very glad and quite flattered that some of you have deemed my blog worth checking out every once in a while, I hope that no one feels any obligation to read everything, or even anything, on here. I just hope some of the pictures are kinda fun. Having said that, thanks, though, to those who do read through some of it! Your comments and emails have been really fun to get.

Slowly but surely

While teaching is still a far cry from being all rainbows and Tootsie Pops, things at the “shcoola” definitely continue to get better and better. Finally coming to know the kids’ individual personalities and abilities has given me the opportunity to be much more flexible with things. While I go off of just one lesson plan a day, each of the four times I teach seems to end up much different—which adaptations are, I think, a positive indicator that I’m getting better at this teaching thing.

The most successful lesson of the week had little to do with the book I was reading that day, I think, and more to do with the fact that I was okay with acting really ridiculous while I taught it. The kids not only think its hilarious when you know how and when to be silly, but seem 10x more willing to speak and, therefore, to learn English when you do things like suddenly forget that you are a human being, give yourself bunny ears and start hopping around the room (“NOOOO Miss Ollie SUE is a rabbit YOU are not a rabbit!!!”). Yes, I sometimes feel very nerdy; but whatever it takes, right?

While excitedly leaping over tiny chairs as one shouts repetitive English phrases can get pretty exhausting--not to mention that the song “Wheels on the Bus” is now, I’m pretty sure, permanently stuck in my head—-this teaching experience has been an overall enjoyable one. I hope I keep getting better at this, especially as I get more and more attached to these dang cute kids.

Speaking of which, here is another one of my current favorite students:



This is Alex. While he can be a real headache sometimes (what 6 year old boy can’t be, though), he is such a huge sweetheart. My favorite Alex moment occurred last week when, as I was teaching the youngest class, this little 3-year old named Igor started crying huge, sad tears for no apparent reason. After trying everything I could to cheer him up, I finally just had to let him sit there and silently sob while I finished up the rest of the lesson. Near the end, Alex and Anton came into the room, saw Igor crying, and instead of just ignoring him and doing their own thing, both went right over and spent several minutes consoling him: patting his back, talking to him really gently, everything. And, I don't know, seeing the two oldest, biggest boys in the program be willing to try and help this much younger one melted my heart a little bit.

KYEV!!

While teaching has been good, none of us complained too much when we had to sacrifice going to the school on Friday to catch our train for Kyev, Ukraine Thursday night.

Wingardium Leviosa!

While I knew from the get-go that the odds that I’d be seated in a fancy compartment with Ron Weasley and Hermoine Granger were pretty slim, Hollywood nonetheless had, at least sub-consciously, led me to believe that my night-train to Kyev would be at least somewhat enchanting. Well, the movie industry had led me ridiculously astray. Not only were our beds located at the very front of the train—meaning that they were each constructed to comfortably hold a small 8-year old (definitely no roomy Hogwarts Express)—but I am now quite certain that the cheery, dancing, hot cocoa-tossing people on “The Polar Express” were not, in any respect whatsoever, modeled after our rather unpleasant Russian train attendants.

Anyway, after setting up our beds, playing a few games with the other teachers and doing our best to avoid the drunk Russian man who kept coming way too close and shouting “American friends forever! No war! No war!” at us, I crammed myself into my bunk and closed my eyes, ready for a solid 9-hour sleep before waking up in a new country. Two hours later, I then discovered that our train and the Hogwarts Express did, in fact, have something in common: that they both allowed soulless, happiness-sucking beings to search the train. While comparing the Russian policeman who woke us up not once, not twice, but three times in the night to check our passports with Dementors may seem a bit dramatic (ok, I guess it is), having my planned 9-hour sleep get reduced to 2.5 was not a happy thing (neither was, at 3 in the morning, having one of policemen get upset at you when the color of pen you’ve used on your migration card was not to their liking. Oops). Anyway, this picture of us on the train, I think, best describes our feelings about the the random police searches:



Finding my passport before falling asleep on the way home.


Sarah and Kaitlyn in their bunks


Even though the train ride proved to be a little less magical than I’d hoped, it was still an adventure—and definitely the best, most cost-efficient way to get around this continent. Now that I know what to expect, our ride to St. Petersburg in a few weeks won't be so bad, I'm sure :)

Friday

After the Kyev coordinator got the nine of us settled in to our teeny apartment the next morning (who, several times, warned us to not be loud at night, since “Americans are emotional people”), we headed out to see the cathedrals.

St. Sophia’s

- First foundations laid in 1034 (still contains frescoes and other artwork from 11th cent.)
- 13 cupolas
- Taken from the Russian Orthodox church in 1934 by Soviet authorities and turned into an architectural museum.
- Still owned and monitored by the state, since several churches claim rights to it.



This cathedral is my favorite so far. Not only was it beautiful—especially the inside—but we couldn’t believe how few tourists were there. We basically had the entire grounds to ourselves, which made enjoying it all ten times easier.


St. Michael’s

- The first Medieval Russian cathedral to have golden-plated domes (which were all stolen by Mongol invaders in 13th cent.)



As you can see, this cathedral was SO blue! The wide range of colors used on these things is insane. After marvelling at the sheer blue-ness of it all, we then noticed how unusually new the exterior seemed to be. After coming home, I discovered how they’d kept it looking like that: it is brand new—-finished in 2000. While the cathedral was originally built in the early 1100s, Soviet leaders in 1934 decided that various renovations made throughout the years had replaced too much of the Byzantine-era architecture with “Ukrainian Baroque”- inspired design. This was apparently so unacceptable that they took all of its artwork to Russia (which Ukraine didn’t get back until just 4 years ago) and demolished it. As you can see, though, its now all restored and gorgeous. This thing has been through a lot.



Saturday

While the cathedrals were wonderful and beautiful in their own way, the highlight of the trip was definitely going to do baptisms at the newly-dedicated Kyev Temple. One reason this temple is so special is that, except for in the United States, no other country but, now, Ukraine has had a temple built within 20 years of the gospel being introduced there. While several factors have probably played a role in this, the new temple is definitely a testament to the fact that there are many great people and faithful members in and surrounding Ukraine. It was definitely great being able to go.



For some reason, I kind of like when temples are built in places that contrast greatly with them (if that makes sense). Sitting there amidst all these huge, run-down buildings everywhere seemed kind of symbolic in a way, or at least emphasized how beautiful it was. This is a shot of the street it sits on:



The baptism room was, I think, the prettiest one I’ve ever seen: the coolest part was the giant light in the middle, which had a traditional Ukrainian/Russian looking red and white pattern all around it. I love how the church makes sure to incorporate regional designs into temples.

Walking into the temple, I was really surprised when the old guy who greeted us spoke perfect English. I finally asked him if he was from the States, which I felt dumb having asked after he laughed a bit and said yes, he was from Lehi. I had no idea that so many Americans would be working at the temple: of the several couples we met who worked there, only two were native Ukrainians. The guy who confirmed and baptized most of us, though (who was going to confirm me, until he heard that my last name was “Bernhisel”--hard to pronounce) was Ukrainian, and it was kinda fun and different hearing everything in Russian. When I got a little bored at one point (we were in there for over 2 hours), I kept myself awake by trying to figure out what words meant what, how they'd be spelled in Cyrillic, how the sentence structure had been rearranged, etc. Ha.

Anyway. Several Ukrainians and Russians were doing baptisms with us. The few I ended up talking to had all travelled so far to get there, and it was obvious that some were doing baptisms for the very first time. It was humbling to see how sincere and excited they were to be there—I take far too much for granted. One middle-aged guy, in particular, was just so happy to be there! Since coming to the temple is such a trek, which also means that the temple there was FAR less busy than the temples in Utah are, we all did a LOT of names—especially the guys, since there were so few there. After dunking the guy like 30 times, the man baptizing him finally asked him if he wanted to end there. I didn't obviously understand his exact response, but he definitely conveyed that he wanted to do some more names, so he did a bunch more. He was smiling SO huge when he came out, it was awesome.

It seems like one of the fun little bonuses of being a member of the church is how often one discovers connections with members they meet—even people from Cowley, WY in Kyev, Ukraine. One girl there serving a mission was from Star Valley and knew my aunt Paula… one temple worker asked me if I was related to a Dr. Harry Bernhisel in Bountiful… The coolest connection I found, though, was one I had with a couple named Vladimir and Gulyana Villakonova (or something along those lines…) from Donetsk—over a thousand miles from Kyev. Knowing that my aunt Tricia’s parents-in-law are currently serving a mission somewhere in Ukraine, I kind of had it in the back of my mind that it’d be fun to find someone who knew them. So, after talking with these people, I decided to just give it a shot and ask if they knew a Brother and Sister Aagard. Oh man, I was not expecting the reaction I got! The lady got SO excited and went off in full-speed Russian for a while before giving me the hugest hug I’m sure any Russian will ever give me, haha. Her husband, who was a little more calm and spoke some English, then told me that they “love very much” Brother and Sister Aagard, after which he then, for some reason, added in that Brother Aagard was “very funny.” Ha :) He then asked if they were my family, and I said yes—which is a lie. I have only even met them a few times… however, realizing that explaining my connection to them might prove very difficult, and since they were already so excited, I figured that my lie was excusable. They definitely wanted a bunch of pictures taken with me, ha. I just hope that when the Aagards see them, that they’ll maybe recognize who I am and not wonder why some strange American they’ve never met is over in Kiev claiming to be related to them. :)




Oy.

Well, the whole “opposition in all things” thing definitely kicked in quite quickly after the temple, starting with my wallet being stolen. Yeah… I know… the fact that I lost my wallet will surprise no one reading this. We’re thinking that I left it in the bathroom in the temple’s hostel next door when it was swiped... Ugh. While this was depressing news, I had, last-minute, decided to leave my passport in the apartment that morning--meaning that only my debit card, drivers license and some cash had been taken. Losing my passport would have cost me at least 500 dollars, not to mention left me stranded in Ukraine for at least 3 more weeks… So, other than losing 1500 rubles and having to call my parents at 3 am MST to cancel my debit card (sorry again about that, Mom..), it was definitely not the end of the world.

Unfortunately, that my wallet was no longer wasn’t discovered until our group had walked about a half mile from the temple. Not wanting to make everyone go back to look for it with me, one of the head teacher’s and I left the group, and decided to just meet up at the Lavra in an hour or so. That was the second mistake of the day... It turns out that the Lavra is gigantic—not a group of 2 or 3 small cathedrals next to one another, as we’d imagined, but packed with dozens of belltowers and cathedrals--even an underground cave system. So, to make a long story shorter, we did not find our group, and were... kind of lost for a while. Just as I was, er, becoming more concerned about the situation, I heard the greatest four words a lost American in a foreign land can ever hear: “Are you guys American?” After turning toward the 3 girls who’d asked this, and emphatically answering YES! as I ran toward them, I became even more excited when one of them then asked, “Are you guys ILP?” Turns out, in the middle of this gigantic city, we happened to run into 3 of the Kiev teachers from our program. Coincidence? I think not!

So, after a pretty awful few hours, things became good again as we continued to explore the city with these girls who knew how to get us home. We had a lot of fun exploring that part of Kyev!

Some shots inside the Lavra



The lawns were very beautiful


Outside it with my instant best friends, ha


Monument for the founders of Kiev


Donde esta el Mexicano food?!

After checking out of our apartment and taking our luggage to the train station, we headed over to the Chernobyl Museum the Ukraine coordinator recommended.



It was closed. As was the War Museum.

So, having passed an incredibly delicious-looking Mexican food restaurant earlier, and having been deprived of all foods Mexican for over a month, we decided to give it a try.

"The Tequila House" written in Ukrainian--kind of funny


Even though I couldn't eat the bowl, and the salsa turned out to be just ketchup with chopped up tomatoes mixed into it, the food tasted AMAZING! Dad, I want a huge fajita when I get home!



Eta Ria!

The best part of the day was definitely meeting Ria—the 73 year-old babushka my roommate Sarah stayed with last semester.

Her apartment building

While the walk there was through a kind of shady part of the city, and the apartment building was pretty run-down, her small house was cute.
At first, this old Ukrainian lady kind of frightened me. Right when we walked in, she started yelling at us in Russian and made us sit down at her kitchen table. She seemed pretty annoyed with us. Then, though, as her radio played and she continued to talk to herself in angry Russian, she set the table and started running all over her kitchen. While we tried really hard to tell her that we'd just wanted to come visit her, and that she didn't need to feed us, she still ended up dishing us up huge plates of pasta.



Since eating giant plates of gluten-y noodles isn’t the best thing for me to do, Sarah and Kaitlyn definitely proved the depth of their friendship when they, already super-full from our Mexican food meal just an hour earlier, voluntarily ate all the ketchup-y noodles off my plate for me. Everytime Ria would turn away for a second, we would furiously scrape pasta off my plate onto one of theirs. Luckily we didn’t get caught—I don’t think Ria would have approved of that. After giving us enough food to feed a large group of large men (Sarah and Kaitlyn were pretty sick), she poured us all this herbal tea with tons of sugar in it. So, I picked up my cup and started to drink it. Ria disapproved of this very much, though, because she then got right up to my face, yelled at me for a few seconds and then started to—no lie—spoon-feed me the tea, blowing on it for several seconds before pouring it in my mouth. I didn’t really know how to react--it'd been a very long time since someone had felt like I couldn't properly feed myself, haha. She did this a few times before she seemed satisfied that I knew how to cool-down my own tea, haha. She was so funny :)

After our plates and tea cups were sufficiently empty, she showed us a bunch of old pictures (“Eta Ria” is the only phrase we really understood) and just, kept talking and randomly yelling at us in Russian.

Pointing out a picture of her father


it was an experience. While she initially scared me, Ria turned out to be such a sweet lady (she's petting our heads in the picture below, haha), just in her own way. As we left, she yelled something at us again that had the word “babushka” in it. So, I’ve decided that she told us that we have a grandma in Kyev if we ever showed up and needed one again.



Police Run-in #2

After our visit with Ria, we still had a couple of hours to kill. So Sarah took us around to some of her favorite places around the city. These included a very old, super cramped cemetery, a huge park full of incredibly huge trees and packs of wild dogs (at one point, 6 or 7 of them came tearing past us… it was pretty scary) and this broken-down building she and a few other teachers had discovered.

Inside


The freaky stairs we climbed up


Conquered.


The backside of it. The big rectangular hole in the middle is where we made it to... Not for the faint-hearted or height a-fearing, I can tell you that :)


Luckily, the Ukrainian policeman didn't come through and kick us out until we'd conquered that thing (it was just two policemen who laughed at us... not a big deal). The fact that I've had 10x the amount of run-ins with law enforcement officers here in the former USSR than I ever had in the States is kind of curious... Maybe I should try a little harder to avoid those. Ha.

Some ending thoughts...

Overall, this being in Russia seems to shove me out of my comfort zone every single day. Up to this point, I admit that life has always been pretty comfortable for me. Some days here, though, very little seems to be: teaching is challenging and new… learning Russian is bizarre and unnatural… just getting around in these huge, wierd cities where I am suddenly dumb and illiterate can be super stressful... All of this uncomfortable-ness, though, has forced me to really rely on the Lord in ways I haven’t before. While I feel like I’ve been taught a lot about the importance of the gratitude side of prayer the last few years, Russia has really strengthened my testimony of how important the asking part of prayer is, too. That the admonition to “ask” appears so frequently in the scriptures has really, of late, become much more remarkable and wonderful to me. I am so grateful for a Savior who not only manifested his love for me when He went through the atonement, but wants to continue to help me every single day. I’ve definitely felt that here, and I know its true.

Well, that’s it I think… whew!! This weekend, I’m going to live with our coordinator’s family for a week in Moscow. It’ll be fun to live in a real Russian house for a few days… I’m way excited.

Well... one more thing. USU's weekend victory, especially considering their less-than-ideal football record the past several years, has earned this logo a spot on my blog. What an honor... not. Ha. Anyway, I miss my school and love my Aggies!! Logan is seriously the greatest. I'm dang excited to be back in January!!