Sebastopol World Friends

The American Student Ambassadors haven't had time to get a blog entry posted recently, but I at least wanted to get a few pictures up. It's hot, humid, and we're all exhausted, but I think everyone is happy and glad to be here. They're keeping us so busy, it's tough to keep up!

Anyway, please see the attached photos. We got a great group photo at the top of Boghdan Hill, you'll see a small bit of Chyhyryn behind us. One neat photo was a shot of a lunar eclipse. We have lots of welcome party photos that were shot by a professional photographer, but I forgot to grab the disc when I was over at his house earlier. I'll get some of those up later on. I also figured I'd post a couple photos of some of the wonderful kids we've been working with at the orphanage.

- Chris

We've arrived safely at our hostel in Kyiv, after a long and exhausting day of air travel. Everyone, especially the students, are really excited to be here, and are enjoying all the new things. More later! For now, attached is a photo of us at the Munich airport.

Travel is always a wearisome experience, but our student ambassadors, and their chaperone, Lyudmila Birko, were in high spirits and energetic as they emerged from customs at SFO. On the way back to Sebastopol, we stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge to give them an opportunity to stretch their legs, walk the bridge, and to see the beautiful cityscape of San Francisco and it's bay.

Upon arrival in Sebastopol, our guests were cheerfully greeted by their eager hosts. Smiles and laughter were plentiful. The attached pictures say it all.

We had our welcome party earlier. Wow.

Not only did the Japanese exchange students sing for us, but the hosting parents sang for us also. There was an incredible assortment of Japanese food, extremely talented live music, and our hosts gave us many gifts and honored us in many ways. Japanese students danced the "Algorithm Dance" for us, and then invited the American students to join in.

The shoe thing was something of note to me.. It seems large event halls have huge quantities of communal indoor slippers. Well, they all come in one size...WAY too small (at least from my perspective). I really wish I had known that you weren't supposed to wear your slippers on stage, otherwise I would have probably been less dazed and confused during my speech. :)

Gotta keep this short because I need sleep, but wanted to post so everyone knew that we're safe and sound. We'll post more as soon as we can!

Update:
Want to see how awake we were on the bus to Yamauchi-Takeo?

Several more photos are attached, see below.

I think a marching band could have gone by and they wouldn't have noticed. It was a pretty exhausting trip. But we made it.

All the students did a great job helping move luggage at the airports, and also when we hit unexpectedly long lines at immigration control in Tokyo, the students did a great job of following instructions and really helped us make sure we made our flight to Fukuoka. Kudos to them.

- Chris

This guy really gets it, offering his home to complete strangers once a week in the hopes of fostering new friendships. Take a look at this "All Things Considered" report from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99172304

The past few days have been amazing. I still am slowly realizing that I truly am not in my homeland anymore. Many things that I take for granted are so different here. This is truly a fantastic benefit of living with natives. Even when doing touristy things, our hosts do things that are natural to them.

The first few days have been amazing! Today we met with the head of the District of Chyhyryn. It was a short, but very good meeting. At over 2 meters tall (~6'4") he cuts an imposing figure. He spoke of competing in a national competition for most beautiful and attractive region of Ukraine.

I feel so loved and wanted. My host family was so excited to see me. They waited patiently for dinner while I washed up from the trip. They provided me all kinds of Ukrainian foods. (What a spread!!) Katooshka (potatoes) with some dill sprinkled over them, served with sour cream. They also had made fish cakes, and pancakes (with onion, cabbage, egg, flour).