Monday May 9th, 2011 - Blog #2

Today was a holiday for most of Ukraine, it was a holiday to celebrate and remember those who faught in World War II... The concept is much like Rememberance Day, except theres is a holiday and involves much of the village coming out and watching parades of vetranes and police officers march through a square where they have monuments in rememberance of heros from the war.

In the morning we met with our language tutors in the centre of the village and they took us around Ternopil. We saw the city square, a local lake, took pictures of Love Island and a love tree where married couples take locks, engrave or put their names on them and then lock them to this tree... this tree is a metal statue and is representative of the ever lasting love and union of these people. It was pretty amazing to see all the very old locks that had rusted to the branches of the tree and see that there were even new locks. Throughout the day we saw a number of these trees along the path surrounding the lake.

We walked through a park named after a famous poet, saw Many monuments of past kings, heros and religious figures. We went into a Catholic Church and saw the most Amazing works of art on the ceiling and walls, and even the crown molding was phenominal !! It was absolutely gorgeous!

Later for a break we stopped at a Cafe and had lattes... We later saw a procession of soldiers walking through a park. We were shown this HUGE monument to honour the missing soldiers of the war, this thing was absolutely enormous. After we went for pizza and salad, I had salad with corn on it - this was a first for me and it was great!

After spending the day with our tutors and the other Canadian students, we all attempted to tell our tutors where we lived in order to get home... but we didn't not even make it close. All the apartments look so similar and there are no street signs and the apartments are build in a pattern of squares so they face one another, making so that they are not really on a main road at all. I ended up getting Kalyn's host sister to take me home after we went shopping for some fruits and vegtables (since Slava doesn't have anything like this at home).

Tonight I had cabbage rolls and a soup with chicken (there were huge pieces of chicken in this soup, it was delicious!), and for dessert I had cake and tea!! 

I found out today that Dima is actually not Slava's son like I thought he was (from our attempt at conversation) and that he is really just a renter! He gave me a gift of the New Testament today so that I can catch up on my Bible knowledge, it should be interesting living with someone who lives thier entire life based around church and their belief in God. I am looking forward to seeing how this goes!

Tomorrow we start our first day of language classes!

xoxo