oh hey 2012. 

there you are. 

its been 2ish months since i posted anything so heres a sum up of the happenings and hopefully the beginning of more frequent posts ( ill say it until it becomes a reality)

trips

BUDAPEST

budapest is an amazing city that i highly recommend to everyone! being that it was the first place we had ventured to while being here, we of course tried to soak all things hungarian and of course anything else we could find that is not available in ukraine. this led to .... many many bags of cheetos, subway ( as in sandwiches!) thai food, and spices! our many budapest(ian) adventures including: walking tour, the baths, underground(literally) club, a romanian band, ruin pubs, locals, london teenagers, and sandwiches! 

SERBIA and ROMANIA

the trip i took over winter was pretty awesome. first we flew to belgrade, serbia on the tiniest baby planes ever invented. if you know me and my "love" for flying then you can just imagine how fast my heart was racing and how much i must have sweat. but its winter so.. i considered it like exercise.... 

belgrade is an awesome city. i also highly recommend it! its alittle harder to get to but it hasnt become a tourist trap that other big western european cities. the people were great, the food was pretty good ( not for vegetarians though....) and we met some cool people in our hostel. there are still bombed out buildings from the war and hearing stories about it from our walking tour guide was unreal. 

we took the train from belgrade to romania and got stuck at the border for 3 hours! they ripped apart our train in search of cigarettes and alcohol. and they ended up finding like 1000 cartons. cigarettes are super cheap in serbia and romania is an eu country ( or becoming im not entirely sure where they are in the process) so cigarettes are much more expensive. needless to say smuggling is huge!

once we actually got into the country we we visited 4 cities. Romania is a beautiful country for sure! we went to dracula's castle (ooooooooooooooooh) and saw the narrowest ( or one of) streets in europe (highlight of the trip!) on our way back to ukraine we missed the one bus that goes between the 2 countries and had to hitchhike back. 

after that we headed to l'viv. there we met up with a few other volunteers, had some doughnut for ukrainian christmas then headed home!

and of course on my 8 hour train ride i got to share my wagon with a school field trip. 30 something 11 year olds running around on a train. gloriousssssssssss.