Camp and tour of Zdolbuniv

Awesome time in Zdolbuniv. We met up with Oksana and Victor Melnik at the train station with 5 other scouts. We headed to the YMCA office to make preparations for camp and meet the other children and leaders. I had no idea they were having a camp, I thought we were just going to visit their site! We took the bus out and walked with the bags, tents and food through farmers fields. The camping site was great with a volleyball net from two trees and good cover from the sun (it was about 35 degrees).

The children accepted us instantly and we did avtivites with a career councilor for 30 minutes and then scouting guidelines, volleyball, cooking over the fire ichiban soup with sandwiches and of course tea! We fetched water from a farmers well and during our volleyball game 3 cows, and 2 goats were hearded straight through by women 2 elderly ladies straight out of the middle ages! The volleyball game was briefly postpones for use to cover the cow patties on the "court" with dirt! This didn't throw any of the children off and they wondered why I was taking a photo.

Last night we stayed with a lovely family. Three generations in one house. Grandmother and two daughters, one spoke english and had survived a winter while volunteering in Saskachewan. They each had a daughter, one 14 and one 2 years old who told Kaitlin in English to "eat porridge"! We discovered that the one daughters musician husband is from Austria, while my boyfriend Gernot is from Salzburg. She makes homeade soaps and gave us one to take home with a cd of her husbands traditional music.

Today we met Dasha and Vikusha who we know from the camp at Svityas. They gave us an amazing tour of Zdolbuniv and Revney. We went for tasty pizza, saw a wedding, checked out the shopping scene (as Dasha is a very fashionable girl), and many beautiful buildings and parks. Tonight we meet Natalia in Kiev for a brief visit and head to the airport to catch our 5AM flight. No rest for the wicked! Looking forward to sleeping in our own beds. See you all soon!