я не понимаю!

After spending the weekend in Kharkov, we returned to the news that school is indeed closed for the next three weeks! At first when we found out, that same giddy feeling came to us that a snow day in childhood would produce. But 15 in a row? That's something else entirely! Truthfully, we've gotten pretty good at passing a full day without doing a whole heck of a lot but three weeks is a long time, especially when we're not supposed to be traveling. We did bring two of our friends back from Kharkov with us to help pass the time!

Kharkov was a brief reprieve from site but we didn't spend our time there as we expected. First of all, it was absolutely freezing so that crushed our motivation to see the local sights. We also arrived at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning and were exhausted so we went to our hotel, checked in, took a nap and did what little exploring we would do over the weekend. We went back to Shevchenko Park and to Blagoveshchensky Church, where we actually witnessed an Orthodox wedding. Even though a wedding was going on, the church was open and so we walked in, found a bench for the elderly and infirm, and observed what was left of the service (which we can only imagine was super long).

Orthodox weddings are not at all like American weddings. They are private events, with just the bride and groom, a maid of honor and best man, and a few close family members in attendance. Everyone stands the whole time and the bride and groom hold lit candles throughout the service. At one point, the best man and maid of honor were holding crowns above the heads of the bride and groom and honestly, we don't know how they managed! They were holding the crowns above their heads with one hand for at least fifteen minutes, maybe longer. We were afraid to take any pictures inside but we did get a good one while the wedding party was posing on the steps of the church. If you look closely, you can see the bride smiling for our camera. We think they thought it was funny that we crashed their wedding:

Saturday evening was the Halloween party and there were probably about 60 PCVs from around the country in attendance. Last week, Lauren and Tess went to the local second hand store to see what they could scrounge up. Right away, Tess found the hat below, which says "High School Musical: The Ice Show" on the side. That inspired the rest of her costume as a figure skater! Lauren was torn between buying a black silk robe to become either a boxer or a geisha or an old, reflective workshirt from some ceramic tile company in England with patches of cement naturally stuck to it. Unfortunately, this particular shop sells its clothes by the kilogram so she decided that the first option would have been too involved and the second, too expensive! Tess found the regal robe below in the children's section and with a little help from a candy box and aluminum foil cardboard tubes, Lauren became a queen. Aluminum foil was the key to many a costume at the party this year -- Lauren used it for the back of her crown and Tess used it for her ice skate blades:

So that you don't think all the costumes were as lame as Lauren's, here's proof that some PCVs went to a lot of effort. Dorothy came as a gladiator and last year, she won best costume for Cleopatra. By the way, her sword is a skewer wrapped in -- you guessed it -- aluminum foil:

While Michael didn't win an award for his costume, it elicited a lot of extreme reactions. Thanks to this past year's birthday present from his parents, Michael was all set to go as Jim Tressel and there are quite a few PCVs from both Ohio and Michigan. As awesome as the t-shirt sweater vest was, his homemade headset really made the costume! Here we are with some of our friends; Nathan is Waldo and Jordan is Odlaw (Waldo's arch nemisis, in case you're wondering):

The next day, we had planned to explore Kharkov further but Jordan was pretty sick so we spent the day camped out in a restaurant and when we got tired of that place, we just moved to the restaurant next door! Since eating out is so uncommon here, there is rarely any rush to turn tables and restaurants will let you sit for as long as you want. And since customer service is seriously lacking anyway, they won't be coming by to ask you if you need anything else either!

We ended our day in Kharkov at a Japanese restaurant, which had great customer service and was really very reasonably priced, considering that sushi is super trendy at present. This place obviously catered to foreigners because their menu was not only in Russian, but also in English and they were very customer service oriented. They served us complimentary Japanese red tea with our dinner, poured out of this interesting looking contraption:

Tess had never even had sushi before and she loved her spicy tuna roll! Lauren stuck to her usual, a vegetable roll but the presentation was just lovely and the right price, for the equivalent of 2 USD:

The guys shared a teriyaki seafood skewers platter, which included bacon-wrapped salmon, tuna, tiger shrimp, white fish, baby octupus and eel:

So if anyone asks us how Kharkov was, we can tell them it was delicious!