It's Been Awhile...

So, Obviously I haven't blogged in a long long long time... since October 2012 to be exact. Yet, here I am almost 10 months later blogging again. There is so much to catch up on but I'll try to keep this post pretty short. Since my last post was about going to Odessa, I guess I'll just pick up from there.

- After Odessa, it was crunch time to get ready for mid-semester visits. Steve one of the Directors of ILP came to visit and it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be to have him watch me teach.

-Then I visited:

L'viv, Ukraine

Budapest, Hungary

Vienna, Austria

Prague, Czech Republic

Dresden, Germany

- While visiting all those wonderful places a few things happened that I think are very relevant. First off, I love my group. The great thing about traveling to all these places is that we all got to bond. 

-Second. Dimples. He was our tour guide. Obviously, Dimples isn't his real name, that's just what my group and I called him. <3 He didn't speak any English, which lead to a few fun situations of trying to figure out when and where to meet back up with our Bus. In fact, no one on our bus spoke any english. Somehow we ended up on a Russian Tour Bus.... Don't ask me how that happened. Another funny thing about our tour was that the bus was leaky. I grabbed a window seat so I could lean up against it and get some sleep, but before long water was dripping on me, it was like a tsunami actually. A really cold tsunami. So I ended up moving and leaning on Taia for most the nights when we were actually sleeping on the bus.
( Dimples Photo Credit: Jenna Millington)

- During the Vacation, my knee randomly started to swell up and made it difficult to walk and was pretty painful. Straight up, it sucked. But, I didn't let it slow me down too much and I still had a great week touring and seeing new, beautiful places.
-After the Long Vacation, I went to see the Doctor and that was a pretty traumatizing and painful experience. But, I survived and was on crutches for awhile...which was not fun especially because I had to walk everywhere. The Doctors in the Ukraine couldn't figure out what was wrong with my knee or what caused it to swell up. Since being back in the USA, the doctors here couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong.. but after a few months of Physical Therapy my knee has been doing great and hasn't gotten that swollen again. Thank Heavens! 

-Post Long Vacation there was a lot of Harry Potter watching and reading and preparing ourselves and our kids for the final performance.

-I also had the opportunity to Visit:

Chernobyl, Ukraine

Krakow, Poland 

Auschwitz, Poland

-When the time came to leave the Ukraine I was sad to leave but was so happy when I landed back on American Soil. Being in the Ukraine for those 4 months was a challenging time for me but I learned and grew so much. I will never ever forget my kids, the challenges and joys of teaching, the places I saw, and all the people I came to love. I will forever be grateful for ILP allowing me the opportunity to live in the Ukraine, and to travel to different parts of Europe.