Ukraine - 2004

Safe travel to all the participants who came so far to share their cultures with us at the 2011 Smithsonian Folkife Festival! It was an honor to work with all of them over the last two weeks.

(Source: Flickr / peacecorps)

maybesproutwings:

The Church of the Resurrection, which perches on a 400m high rock over Foros, looking out over the Black Sea.

(The construction of the church was funded by a rich local tea merchant, A.G. Kuznetsov, in gratitude to God for saving the Tsar and his family from a near-fatal train crash in 1888.)

Peace Corps Volunteer Shelia Slemp is joined by Ukrainian friends for a cooking demonstration at the Folklife Festival.  They are cooking red borscht — beet based soup enjoyed with smetana (sour cream).

Later in the week, Slemp is singing, acting, and dancing with the Opika Performance Group, a group of nine young students from Ukraine. The group also educates the community, through performance art, about quality of life issues impacting Western Ukraine. 

maybesproutwings:

My walk to school.