oh wow.

so... last couple days in a nutshell-
wednesday-saying goodbye to my family and heading off to utah with Janelle and her mom. the interesting thing that happened on our journey was we couldnt start the car!! it was really weird, the clamps on the battery cables were gross and apparently her battery was awful as well. after jiggling the cables a little bit a couple times, it started. we ended up going to auto zone and a very nice man helped us ignorant females figure out what we needed and then ended up fixing it for us. he wouldnt take any money for his troubles even! so grateful for him!!

thursday/friday - we got to the airport around 5:30 in the morning, and were only given our itineraries. when we were trying to get our boarding passes, they kept sending us to different people and switching everything up that im not sure i really understand even now! but we ended up getting split up so there were around 6 of us that went on a different flight. we got to chicago and onto the next plane with little trouble, and then went on a crazy HUGE! plane and flew across the ocean. I ended up watching 3 movies because i couldnt sleep. we landed in frankfurt around 5:30 friday morning. (i know this is really random, but the toilet covers in that airport were so weird!!!)  we were joined by everyone going to ukraine there, and then our flight was overbooked! 8 of us ended up taking a later flight for 200 euro each. as we were going through security for the flight all of the sudden they all just stopped and security came in and sent all the people that hadnt been through security away and all the employees went over towards the gate and then were roped off. i have no idea what was going on, but 2 of our 8 did not make it through security and almost missed the flight!! our last plane was really scary, the plane sounded like it was about to blow up when we were taking off and landing, and the wings looked like they were really fragile, pretty intense!!! we had to take a bus to where it was parked and went up to it on a stair car, which was a new experience. from the ukraine airport, we were taken to our host families.

saturday - training.

on my host family -  they are so very nice!!! my host mom's name is Larisa, and she works at a news station. she doesnt know very much english at all, so she mostly just speaks a hundred miles an hour in russian and then gestures at things. at first i would just nod, but usually she was asking me if i wanted more food and she was already giving me a ton of food that i couldnt finish!! sergey is larisa's 8 year old son, and the whole time i have been here he has had a fever, so i havent seen him much, but he is very cute!! Nina is the grandma. she doesnt live with the family, but she came over the first few days. she knows some english and french along with russian, which is very unique, because it is very rare to find someone in the older generation to speak something other then russian. Nina has been showing me around and taking care of me while Larisa was caring for Sergey.

sunday - it takes about an hour by metro and bus to get to church, and when we walked in to the international branch we tripled it (there was about 25 of us). the branch is very involved tho and there is FHE on mondays, institute on wednesdays, and already one of the couples has invited us over for this thursday.

anyway, i have already written more then anyone wanted to know i am sure, so i will tell more later!!!