A Cultural Experience

Last evening we had the privilege of feeding some new friends! David works with – at one of his clients – a couple who are here from the Ukraine on a work visa. They are a young married couple who work as in the technical side of business.


Since they are far, far, far from home – this is their first time ever to the US - we wanted to open our home and make them feel welcome and let them have a taste of “real American” family life! I really don’t know what that means for most Americans but for us that means lots of excitement when Daddy arrives home, a bunch of chaos until dinner, dinner, then more playing, yelling, joking, pillow fighting, bath time and then bed time! So we wanted to share this with them! I hope we didn’t scare them away!

I really enjoyed hearing about their lives back home and their culture and all the differences. Their country borders Russia on one side and Poland on the other and Belarus above them. It was very interesting to hear their comments about their government and how different it is from ours. They shared a bit about how their government works. If you think we have it bad you are mistaken! They were telling us that sometimes their political leaders actually get into fist fights!?!?! Can you imagine? Although the more I think on that – maybe it would solve a few issues for some of our folks and they could just move on to more pressing issues…





The neatest thing for me from the evening was seeing where they live on the internet – they used one of those on-line map things to show us their city and even their actual apartment building! It was way cool! That of course and listening to them speak… their accent is totally cool!

At one point during dinner we were talking and Luke looked at David and said “How do you even know what they are saying?” Which caused us to laugh, and David quickly told our guests that Luke was asking how we understood them. We told Luke they were speaking English and he just had to listen closely. Our guests then proceeded to tell us that they have a hard time understanding children here as well. So it seemed fair and I don’t think anyone’s feelings were hurt!

All in all it was a fun evening and I think good exposure for our kids – who often don’t see anyone but me and their Daddy in a day! Maybe there will more of that in the future for us!

The world is so big – yet right in a neighboring town are folks from the other side of the planet! I loved having them here and hearing about their world. I want more of that for me and my family! And maybe I can even learn a bit of Russian in the process!