Guess what?  Yesterday I finished our camp laundry!  What?  You’re reminding me that we’ve been home for a week and a day?  Oh I know.  It’s just that there are 7 of us (our friend Maks stayed with us for a while after camp), our washer machine is the size of my pinky finger, and we have no dryer, and my children also had to be fed and stuff like that.  Anywayssss, the joy of the empty hampers was great while it lasted.  😉

Yesterday my wallet and my phone were stolen.  So sad.  The wallet was not such a big deal, there were no credit cards or anything.  My Oregon license was in there…but a lot of good it does anyone here.  There was about $100 in grivna.  The real bummer is my phone.  We saved up long and hard to get unlocked phones to bring here…and now it’s gone.  It had like 3,000 pictures on it too!!!  Many of the pics were backed up, but all the camp pics are gone forever.  Addy cried about the lost Romaniv pictures.  I cried too.  If you could pray that nothing really rotten, like identity theft comes out of this we would really appreciate it.  It feels pretty vulnerable to have all my texts and pics just out there in the hands of some stranger.  I don’t like it at all.  Yuck.  Sooooo, if you need to call me you’ll have to go through my secretary.  His name is Jed.  He’s cute, but kind of forgetful, so you might have to call more than once.  Hehe.

On Sunday we leave for our next big adventure.  We are heading to Lviv, a city in Western Ukraine, for a Ukrainian language intensive course.  Hold me.

In May we started Ukrainian lessons with a teacher in Lviv via Skype.  Our lessons are through the Ukrainian Catholic University there and are specifically for foreigners who need to learn Ukrainian.  Oh man, it is intense.  Our teacher speaks no English during our lesson, but she really knows what she’s doing.  It makes our brains hurt, but it’s effective.  Since MTU is closed for the month of August, we decided to make a trip out to the University for a language intensive.  Our Ukrainian is a bit stuck at the moment, so we are really hopeful that two weeks of brain torture will get us over the hump.

The kids will come along, and Jed’s parents will come from Germany to take care of them in Lviv while we study.  That will be fun!  Everyone says Lviv is amazing, like the best city in Ukraine, like a completely different world compared to Zhytomyr, so we are super excited to check it out.

Can you spy Zhytomyr and Lviv?

When we get back from Lviv it will time to head back to school!  School here starts on September 1st.  Addy and Ez will head back to Ukrainian school and Havalah will start homeschool kindergarten (What????  Impossible.).  Seth will tag along and join in with Havalah as much as he is interested.  Addy and Ezra will transfer to a new school this year.  We loved our school last year (Ukrainian public school) and had an awesome experience there.  But, there is a Ukrainian Christian school here in town and we decided to try that out this year.  It’s 100% Ukrainian, just like the other, but raising disciples of Jesus is their biggest priority.  We have many friends through MTU and camp that send their kids there, so we feel like there is greater potential for relationships there.  The kids are excited to make the move and to see people they love everyday.  There won’t be anyone they know in their class, but that’s okay.  Just knowing there are many people there who know us and love us makes this Mommy’s heart feel a bit more settled.  I still don’t like them going to school, but it’s necessary for language acquisition, and this seems the most peaceable route.

Sorting school supplies. She is her mother’s daughter.

We still haven’t decided about sending Hava and Seth to the local kindergarten.  We would much rather find them a language tutor to come play with them a couple times a week.  So, we’re searching for that possibility first.

That’s the skinny with us!  This summer has flown by, but at the same time it seems like a lifetime ago that my parents were here visiting.  Crazy.

I’ll check in with you from Lviv!  Later gators!