The Donetsk Boys: Sergey....

I haven't really even given an introduction of the guys that went to Donetsk with me last week so I'll do that now with some pics from the trip... the proverbial 2 birds.

Sergey is 18 and grew up in Kerch.  He lived with his mom and grandma just down the road from the Hope Center and was worked here as a volunteer for about 4 years.  After high school he and his mom moved to Kharkov and lived with his paternal grandmother while he went to university (Kharkov's like Boston - jam packed with colleges).  He continued to come back for summer camps as an interpreter.  He has a great ear for English (especially American) and he's probably the best common-language interpreter I've met here.  He's had his run-ins with Tanya about long hair, tattoos, piercings, etc., but has been a great asset to the Hope Center over the years.  Due to my inspiration, he now blogs here (in English).

Maybe if more of you visit we can convince him to use the built-in spell checker.  Sergey reads my blog so he can feel to correct the record if any of this is incorrect.

This is us at the Ukrainian restaurant in Donetsk where we ate breakfast and lunch and then hung out for a few hours playing Phase 10, the official card game of the Hope Center.

He was absolutely convinced that we needed to play this DDR game in a Kharkov arcade.  He was wrong.  We got annihilated even with one person only being responsible for 2 step pads.

Here we are outside of Olympic Stadium before the game in Donetsk.  Our mix of English and Russian communication always confuses people and right after this some bystanders were still unsure as to whether we were Ukrainian or English (the only 2 options).