sweltering heat

It's really hot here...I don't know how many degrees exactly, but it's just hot.

Yesterday, a group from DCU went up to Sviatohirsk Monastery. It was my second trip this summer, but this was much nicer and more laid-back (i.e. no one was forcing me on long walks to look for monks' graves or constantly urging food on me at lunch). We drove up to the top of the mountain by the old Soviet statue of Artem (a Soviet hero) and took pictures (Stephanie took one for me on my camera of my feet in my new flipflops!). Then we came down, toured the monestary, and had lunch.

After lunch, part of the group hiked the mountain to go up to the upper churches, but since I'd done that once this summer, Stephanie, Lana, and I had "twenty-somethings bonding time", which meant a long discussion about polygamy, particularly how it relates to some fundamentalist Mormon sects, and then we went shopping in the bazaar for scarves.

Lana wants to change her name to Sara so we'll all have names beginning with S. I suggested "Svetlana" because it's Ukrainian and sort of sounds like her name anyway. :)

I wanted to post about church today, but we're going to have a hymn-sing this evening (in English), and so I'm off to that.