meow

its kind of embarrising the amount of pictures I have on my computer of me and the family cat.
I opened up my photobooth and started to look at the pictures and realized that I literally don't have enough friends to actually take pictures with humans. Instead I've resorted to cats. And lets be honest, who hasn't? The world is obsessed with cats.

On another note. I come home in three weeks. Home to America. But in exactly two weeks, I will be back in the greatest place on earth. PARIS, FRANCE. Can time please go by quicker? I am so ready to leave, I know that can sound ungrateful or bad, I love it here, I love Ukraine, and the people and my students and my host family -- but really, its time.
I've been here long enough. And maybe I take back my life-long desire to have a younger brother. I have learned why people get so annoyed with their younger siblings. 

This weekend is one of my last here. 

 yay

thanksgiving

thanksgiving2012 from Samantha Herbert on Vimeo.

Here's a little thanksgiving treat and preview of my break trip to Poland this weekend. 
I am in love with Krakow, so glad we got to go back and spend four whole days there. So thankful for so much in my life right now, especially the opportunities that I have been given. I've been so blessed to live such an adventurous life that I am in love with. 

hope you had a great thanksgiving weekend. I sure missed my family, and being home for Reay family thanksgiving dinner. Especially that stuffing. I'll be home in less than a month and I cannot wait to see all those people that I love and eat green chile enchiladas all day.

music continued

music with vova from Samantha Herbert on Vimeo.

Alright alright. Here's some videos from last night
Ps, Vova cut his hair himself, thats why his bangs are super short. 

musical talents of..

After church me and Taylor like to sneak into the primary room to play the piano for a bit before the russians come in. Tay plays piano and is so good. So this is a chance for her to play since there aren't any other pianos available. And this is my chance to have her teach me :)

Do not let your kids quit piano. Raise your hand if you regret stopping piano lessons as a kid? I'm pretty sure everyone has their hand up. Really wish I could play. I love music, and truly admire all those that are musically inclined. I love going to the performances we have up on campus to hear how talented people are. I'm blown away every time. I could die happy listening to somebody play me a song and sing. Best thing ever.

So we stayed and played for about 15 minutes before the children came in and we decided to leave. It takes us about 2 hours to get to and from church every week, so on our way back on the metro we stopped and got some waffles. Oh my gosh, these things are to die for. Broke the sabbath, don't judge.. remember I hadn't eaten for seven hours. Then I got back on the metro and rode to my bus stop, where there is a bakery with the best apple pie pastry, so I had to get that too.. oops. 

When I got home, host family had some friends over and they brought me a box of chocolates! It was the cutest thing ever, I was so happy. We ate dinner and I tried to lay down because I was exhausted, but of course the kids came in constantly so I finally decided to get up and go play with them. We went into the music room and played guitar and piano together. 
I played my newly learned song for Vova and we decided to play together. Then he taught me a song on the piano that he can play on the guitar and we played that together. We videod a bunch, and it was hilarious. That kid.. he's insane, but so funny. 
Hopefully these videos work for me to upload, cross your fingers.

 How cute is this little girl?

Host mom helping Polina play guitar.

early morning rock climbing

e333344444444bennnn[]hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgg - compliments of the cat. thinks he can type, silly kitty. Ps, why do cats purr? He's also purring.

So me and Kim have been trying to really commit to running for the rest of the time we are here, short, but well worth it. We've done good so far. Sore legs, and cold bodies every morning, but it makes us feel so good to get out and run. We have enough food in our stomachs, its time to work some off. 

This morning happened to be extra freezing. I had all my layers on, but was still cold. We ran around our neighborhood streets, got looks from the locals like we were crazy for being out in the cold and actually exercising. After our run I decided to keep walking so I took a nice walk around some more neighborhood. When I made it back to my house I rang the doorbell at the gate. 

side note - my host family is super into sleeping in. vova is homeschooled right now and the mom doesn't work, so theres really never any need to wake up. right? I fit in well here. the other day, none of us got out of bed until noon. oops, #sorryimnotsorry. 

So when I rang the doorbell at 9:45 of course there was no answer. I don't have a key, and our house has a huge stone wall set around it with a gate that you have to be buzzed in for. I waited for a couple minutes until I rang it again, still no answer, and nobody getting on the speaker to say "samanTa is it you?" So still I waited. And rang. And waited. And rang. Then rang continuously. Because by this point - twenty minutes later - I was freezing.

The wall really isn't that high, so while I'm standing there looking at it I'm thinking, "I could totally climb this. Easy." But I live across from a little convenient store and people kept walking in and out, I was scared to get caught and taken to Ukrainian jail without understanding. So instead I walked over to Kim's. And rang their doorbell. And what do you know, ...no answer. I gave up and went back to my wall and braved it. Climbed up the stone sides then jumped back down on the other side. 

And ran and jumped back in my bed like everybody else. . who didn't wake up for about another hour. So funny. 

I didn't tell them about this, and I probably won't.. 

its cool

that I live with the worlds largest, most obnoxious dog in the world.
that I thought it was the wrong date all day, and missed my class registration time.
that I'm now on the waiting list for multiple classes.
that its almost two a.m. and I'm still awake.
that my chapstick is missing and my lips hurt real bad.

 [ ferari shop next to the institute building tonight, super chouette ]

obviously the photographer was incredibly skilled.

 [ I came home to a dinner made by Vova. One egg and a more than half eaten piece of bread. He's the best ]

honestly though. My days have been going so much greater than I picture them to. As much as I'm so ready to come home, I'm also going to miss this place more than I can even imagine yet. My host family is so amazing, I cannot believe how blessed I was with them. The kids I teach are my best friends. I absolutely LOVE them and they get me through the day.

 [ sequins, polka dots, and cords ]

saturday

This weekend has been good. I ended the week happily and went over to Taylor and Julie's for the night. We watched moulin rouge, which was my first time ever, and how I have no idea.. loved it.

Saturday morning the ward has a service project organized. We went to babi yar park, a memorial site where the largest shooting during the holocaust took place. We raked up all the leaves and made it look beautiful. 

During this shooting, the Nazis lined up the people along this ravine. When they shot them their bodies would fall down and be left there. They were left for two years until they came and burned everything before the Russian armies came in. 

We got a lot of WWII history on our two week trip, being in germany, and poland, and I never realized the history that is right here where I'm living. Oksana, my host mom, also said there was a concentration camp not too far from our house, and now it is just a memorial. She said she'd take me to see it. 

After the project we headed into the city over to souvenir street. I finally got to walk down the entire street. I've been about four times now and nobody will ever go all the way with me, finally I did. Scored some antique postcards, and found some books. 

There was also a staircase I've never seen before. The stairs are super steep and it goes pretty high up to this look out point. It was gorgeous. You could see all of Kiev. And seeing the whole city made me really sad, here is this massive place that I am living and I don't even know any part of it. I feel like I haven't gotten to know the city, which is something I wish I could. I know that there is so much to see, I just haven't seen it yet and my time is running out. I don't really get the opportunity to just walk around the city. Thats one of my favorite things to do, and its something that I really miss about Paris and living in a city where you can do that. 

 Lovely magnets of the nasty food I am so incredibly sick of. Who would want these?

 here's the view^^

 there's my st. andrews. love that building

typical ukrainian. look at all those flowers. these headbands are my favorite! I'll be making those a fashion when I get back.

Afterwards I went over to the Chernobyl museum. It was really awesome. I loved the entire set up of the museum and how everything was displayed. It also had a ton of cool information, like stories on specific people, different hero's and everything that happened during that time. It was pretty crazy, and great to learn about.

By the time we were out of there it was maybe four in the afternoon. But by walking outside you'd think it was eleven o'clock at night. It gets dark here so early now. I hate it. 

On my way home I decided to just ride the metro to the end of my line. I've never been to the end, so I stayed on and then walked out the exit. Nothing special, just some apartment buildings. It was nice to sit on the metro by myself though. I love doing that. 

touring europe

One week down after my two week long vacation. 
It was a very long week, with lots of stress, annoyances, and long days of teaching, but it actually went by super quickly.
I've been a bad blogger lately. Mainly because instead of doing something productive with my free time I'd rather lay in bed watching episode after episode of friends. So thats pretty much what has been going on over here. Worth every minute though

Anyway, we got two weeks off of school for vacation time. We had to leave the country in order to renew our visas, so what better way to do it than by visiting five new countries for two weeks. 
I'll get around to posting lots of pictures, but for now, here is where I went;

we started here.

budapest, hungary.

I didn't know what to expect in budapest, and I think thats why I fell in love with it so quickly. It will remain one of my favorite cities forever, and we only got to spend one day there. I hope to go back someday.

Then our bus stopped in Prague, Czech Republic. This was round two for me, and although I wasn't excited about spending five entire days there instead of being in other cities longer, I was happy to be back to something somewhat familiar. Also, finding a Paul was maybe what changed my attitude. Macarons every single day. Do you even know how complete that can make your life?

One day in Vienna. No, no, only about FIVE HOURS. It was completely unfair. Vienna was amazing, so so amazing. It was the type of city I belong in. Beautiful, clean, beautiful, streets lined with pastries and ice cream. I could live there for a while. Love love loved vienna.

Then we got a day in Dresden. And when I say day, once again I mean five hours. I really hoped to love Germany, and I did, but I won't lie, Dresden didn't really do it for me. It wasn't a big tourist spot. And actually as I write this maybe that is what I did like about it.. It was very quiet and quaint. Easy to just walk around and enjoy the scenery. I ended up spending the day at a carnival, so it was so much fun.

Berlin, Germany

Okay, such an awesome place. We had a tour guide for about two hours then free time for another two hours. We didn't get much in, but we saw all the highlights. So much history there.

Our last city to visit was Krakow, Poland. It was gorgeous! But of course, with all the unorganized-ness of this program, we ended up in Poland on a national holiday, where EVERYTHING was closed. Luckily we had a tour guide for about two hours, but then free time through the night until we left for prague again. It was weird. But I got to walk through some sketchy parts of town and just roam the city with our Ukrainian coordinator. I like Poland

And good thing I do, because ...we're going back! On this trip we didn't get the chance to visit aushewitz, we all really wanted to go. The russians continued to tell us that we couldn't handle it. . that we didn't understand what it really is.. So we didn't have the time or get the opportunity which was a bummer. 

Luckily though, plans here are kind of the worst and somehow the amount of days we needed to be gone for our visas was calculated wrong and we need to leave again. [Or else get stuck in Ukrainian jail the rest of our lives..? just kidding] So the program is paying for a bus to krakow and for our hostel for four days. Free trip to Poland! Score. Happy thanksgiving to me. 

And here's Vova my host brother. What we do on week nights. 

prague

I had the opportunity to travel europe for the last two weeks. 
Along with the rest of the ILP girls, we rode on two of the worst tour buses ever. Don't ever take a European tour on a bus.
I traveled to six different countries. All of which I will blog about at some point in my life
But for now, just one picture
Last year on study abroad I went to prague for the weekend, and on this trip we got to spend about five days there. It was awesome getting to go back to such a spectacular place. The first time around was unforgettable and so much fun, and the second time was just as memorable. That city is gorgeous