We had our own little Thanksgiving celebration here, during which we tried to be as American as possible. We even went as far as having two dinners so that we could visit with different people.
On the day itself, three of the mission families were out of town getting their Visas all situated in Germany. For that reason, we had dinner as just the AIM team. This was all done in a great deal of fun and making things up on the spot. So many things we are used to having in the States are absent here and we had to make up the slack. For instance, in the states when I want to make a green bean casserole I simply combine a can of french-styled green beans with a can of cream of mushroom soup and sprinkle french-fried onion right out of their cannister right on top of the whole deal. Done! There's only three ingredients and they all come in a form that can be stored on your pantry self forever. Of course, we don't have any of those three things here and we're too proud to just say 'well, we'll go without this year.' So the first step is researching and cooking cream of anything soup. That done, I had to find some green beans(that are currently out of season. But since Ukraine is a modern(-ish) country I was able to find frozen beans at the store. Now the greatest challenge was getting those casual little onions on top. A few more minutes on the computer I found that they're just what they're named. Frenched(cut to small strips) fried(in oil on my gas stove) onions(much to the despair of my eyes!)
Now, most of our recipes went like that. Ukraine doesn't offer our usual conveniences, so we made them from scratch. This was rough on us students as we had less experience in these matters , but we managed quite well.
We also planned through email that the whole mission team should have a dinner together when the majority of our members had returned. We are still missing the company of the Hindman family, but they have found a new sponsoring congregation and are due to return to us mid-December. We had it Monday afternoon, since that is our regular day off. We had a great time and cooking was supremely easier since we had experience from the previous meal. When we were finished with dinner we retired to the living room to watch a movie together. Unfortunately two of our members came down sick and had to be taken home (two more were already home with a third playing nurse). After the movie we were to play some board and card games, but I had grown tired enough to retreat back to my apartment and check on my sick housemates...
Since then, several of our friends have come down sick also. We have planned to go to Mariupol on Thursday for the weekend to attend a wedding and those of us going are all hoping to not be sick while there or on the train. We'll just have to see how everything goes about. I find that being sick there would be quite upsetting since this is our first opportunity to go to a wedding here in Ukraine and I had hoped to see some friends from Donetsk there. The last time I saw these people I managed to get quite sick then, and I'd hate to let them believe that I sick so often!
Godspeed,
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