la vie à Bruxelles: some more ukraine

here is the second half of our kiev trip....

{if you look closely at this picture..you might have to make it larger....but if you look you see a beautiful yellow house...it looks like a mansion...but if you look next to it you see a house that is just falling apart. it was amazing to see the extreme poverty, right next to a beautiful mansion}

{{this wall is part of the lavre. it's on the grounds of the russian orthodox church. we had a very different experience here. in the lavre they have what they call "caves". in order to go into these caves i had to cover my head with a scarf, rent a skirt type thing to cover my jeans and purchased a candle. then we climbed down these stairs to these hallways that would've been completely dark, if we didn't have candles. in this area the bodies of some of their saints were kept. it was really interesting the shrines they had to them. they were in glass coffins and the bodies were wrapped up in beautiful clothe. the people there would kiss the coffin as they passed, then crossed themselves. they also crossed themselves everytime the exited a room. it had a very eerie feeling to it. in some of the coffins the hand of the saint was placed outside of the wraps, so we were able to see their actual mummified hand. its a very interesting religion, it felt really dark and cold to me. but i enjoyed seeing this new culture.}

{beautiful colored houses. love that they use all sorts of colors here}

{This was on a street full of awesome touristy gifts...i for some reason get caught in their traps...but anyways this lady was just cookin her lunch here in the street. amazing to see how different someones life is from mine}

{the chernobyl museum was so sad.. the destruction caused when the nuclear reactor exploded was incredible. so many cities were evacuated and most haven't been legally inhabited since. so many health problems occured from the radiation in the air. and so much of the problems occured because the russian president tried to cover up the seriousness of the incident. he hid if for three days, until a nuclear plant in another country reported extremely high levels of radiation, they thought if was from their plant, but discovered what had happened at chernobyl. the people were told to leave their homes, but that they could come back from their things. however they never returned and they lost all they had. some people live illegaly in the area around chernobyl because they are so poor they can't live anywhere else. it's so sad because there is still so much radiation there}

{these two pictures were taken from the oldest orthodox church in ukraine}

{unfortunately this picture also has a sad story. in the the 1930's stalin decided he wanted to destroy the ukrainian culture (which meant people) so the USSR could be completely russian. to do this he caused a famine to occur in ukraine...i can't even imagine how someone could feel justified doing something this awful. but 6 to 7 MILLION people died because of this. we were there on a national day of remembrance for those who were victims to this genocide. the square we went to was filled with candles people had brought to light in memory of those who had died}

{this is the spot where president packer dedicate ukraine for the spreading of the gospel. it was located next to the statue of the man who brought christianity into ukraine. but it was cool to think about that moment, when after years of being controlled by the USSR, ukraine could now be open to the gospel and it's amazing to see how this gospel truly is spreading throughout the world}

{this is the white house of ukraine...it's massive...bigger than the real white house...oh and don't worry you can just walk right up to it, no problem...no security, nothing...try doing that at the white house...you would get shot if you got as close to the white house as we got to this presidents house}

{the longest escaltor i've ever been on..took like 5 minutes...kiev has the deepest metro system in the world...i think they said it was like 500 feet below ground}