We had church at a different place today because of Stake Conference, so we afterwards a small group of us decided to go to the park, because it was a pretty nice day outside. There were a lot of cool things happening in the park that day; a bunch of boys maybe around 12 to 13 years old all with yo-yo's just yo-yoing to some music on a stage, little kids on Shetland pony rides, those little electric cars driving by on the sidewalk, bubbles, scooters, roller-blades, weird looking bicycles, a ton of little dogs... it was just a really neat atmosphere. And the kids! I don't think I've seen so many Ukrainian children in one place in my whole entire time being here! You only rarely see a kid with his mom on the metro or the street or market, but here they were just everywhere! Riding the ponies, doing all of those things I mentioned earlier.
We went and sat on these two benches that were pulled up parallel to each other and sat staggered so our feet were on the bench across from us. This old babushka started yelling at us, "Dyevuchka!" (A name I'm very used to being called here in Kyiv) Igor translated later, he said the lady said something like "What are you doing? You're putting your disgusting feet on the place that people sit!" She did finally leave when all of us took our feet down. When the coast was clear, we put our feet back up on the benches (we're such rebels!) and just kept talking.
We met some other cool people too, then there was this guy selling frisbees on the bench across the sidewalk from us. I was wandering if they were any sort of special frisbee, because my dad loves frisbees, and it would be neat to bring him one back from Ukraine. Our Ukrainian friend went and asked, they were just normal frisbees made in China. Later while we were talking I noticed the frisbee-man throwing his frisbee up and catching it. I told the others, "That guy is a salesman who knows what he's doing!" Carly said, "Oh he just looks like an old guy playing with a frisbee!" But he saw us watching him, and once he started talking to us, I knew we were in for a shpeel (sp?). He found out we were American and connected something in his book to that fact, though it was hard to understand completely because everything had to be translated through our friend. He told us all about it, really enthusiastically, but I just enjoyed watching him talk. He had the worst teeth! It seemed all of them were rotted down except his two front teeth, which were really long. It gave him an almost rabbit-like appearance, which sort of added to his effect as a salesman. He said if one of us went really far he'd show us something neat. He just threw his frisbee really hard, but explained that it was really good exercise. He connected that to his book too. Anyways, after his shpeel he asked me if I wanted to buy a book, I said "Maybe tomorrow, I have no money today". He walked away after that :)
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