BEDWG & A Birthday…

Today was the second day of a packed weekend in Kyiv.  And it did not disappoint.

First, was the serious part with the bi-annual Business and Economic Development Working Group meeting.  I am President, so I had been prepping for weeks and today just meant I needed to run the meeting.  It was awesome.  We voted to created two new committees that I am super excited about, and will be developing a business and economic development camp/symposium for university students in Ukraine.  YEH!!! 

The meeting lasted about four hours and soon we were all headed out to begin celebrating Christina’s birthday.

We started the afternoon by dropping all bags and checking into the hostel in which we were all staying.  Then we headed to a beer tent in Shevchenko Park that Peace Corps Volunteers tend to inhabit regularly. 

Let the good times begin!

    

I made the mistake of leaving my camera with this threesome when I went to get something to eat.  These are the pics that showed up later and made my laugh…and then I realized that these were fabulous for the blog and suddenly I fell in love with these pictures.  We all had a absolute blast together.

   

   

   

Laura took a sweet picture of me and I thought it would be fun to get one together.  Little did I know that we DID NOT have the same plan….

    

Teaching Elyse how to wrap and wear a scarf…

    

The boys….LOL!!!  Thanks Eddie for absolutely making this picture so fabulous.

These three were amazing.  Each did a huge round of dishes.  Ben kept up with my cooking, Laura cleaned up for the PCV crowd and Kate did an awesome job at picking up the pieces of all the leftovers and leftover eating by non-PCV’s.  A cook cannot do her thing, especially quickly and in a packed hostel without awesome help.

And then there was Baked Ziti as requested by Christina for her birthday dinner.

    

    

The HUB Hostel in Kyiv has a huge basement with a large hang out room and kitchen.  We put every inch to great use.

One of the coolest things was the mix of nationalities and people from different countries.  Americans, Australians, Russians, a few guys from Belarus…it was very cool!