Too Much Time On My Hands

     Well, not really. But Friday is usually a day where I don't have much going on. It used to be one of my lesson days but that's changed. I'm on to a Tuesday/Thursday schedule. So, in honor of my "day off," I've gone and made another cooking video. While the road-repair guys were working outside, I was cooking, videoing, and creating lunch. Now that it's all done, I realized that today feels like Saturday.

Finally fixing some of the potholes. The road was getting bad.

Behind the scenes of the cooking/videoing process.

     I was feeling creative again today. So I made a video of my process for making fried rice and ham. It's one of my favorite meals and has been since I was a kid. In recent years, I've learned to make it but haven't done it on my own until I moved here. Even then, it took a while to figure out exactly how best to do it. I've gone through several iterations with ingredients and have finally settled on this as the version I like the best. But the other variants are good too.

Since this is an established recipe and not one I cooked up, you can go here to find it. I've modified it slightly. But that's the beauty of any fried rice dish. You can put just about anything you want into it.
     In other news, Spring has officially sprung. The weather is getting warmer. The grass is getting green. The trees and bushes are even starting to sprout. It won't be long before I'm wearing shorts more often. I've only done it once so far this year. But that will change soon.
     The rest of this week has been mostly normal. David came back on Sunday. He didn't come to Liberty English then but was back for the fun on Monday. That means it's pretty much back to normal. We'll have another sushi meeting on Monday before English.
     The Liberty meeting on Wednesday went well. I am starting to understand more and more. It's getting easier to follow where the discussion is going and to know what they are talking about. Also, Dasha from the Liberty team has offered to translate some of the important parts of the discussion for me. So I won't be as lost. And it looks like the Bible study will be happening again. More details later on that as it gets figured out.
     I already mentioned my lesson schedule changing. Since my tutor works for KCA as her day job, we need to work around her schedule for my lessons. This time of year is when the final exams start happening. Most of those will be on Fridays. So we needed to shift things around. That will probably only be until school lets out for the summer. Recently, we've started watching an old Soviet comedy to help me with my comprehension. It's called The Diamond Arm and is on Youtube if you want to watch it. Just turn on the subtitles if you don't speak Russian. I didn't find it very funny but it is interesting for the historical context. Some of it is funny but you need to be able to speak Russian to understand all of the jokes.
     I did have a question a little while ago that I needed to be reminded of. Asher, from Covenant Church, wanted to know about the relationship of Israel and Ukraine. Israel actually has a lot of business in Ukraine and vice-versa. In 2012, there was about $1.3 billion in commerce between the two countries. Personally, I've had some Israeli products including hummus. As with most countries, the two have a little bit of business everywhere. Their histories are linked quite a bit too. For further reading, here are a few articles about Ukrainian Jews, Israel-Ukraine relations, a recent Israel-Ukraine arms deal, and the current trade situation.
     I think that's all I had in mind for this post. Time for me to clean up the apartment and get ready for the Bible group. We're meeting again here at my place tonight.
     OH! One more thing. The blog saw it's 5000th page view this week! And I'm really close to my 100th post too.