When kids graduate from highschool it is Ukranian tradition to commemorate their childhood by dressing up like kids and walking up and down mainstream making as much noise as they can with whistles or just yelling or singing. These kids were standing less then a block away from our old apartment. When we saw this our first year, we were kind of wondering as you can well imagine what in the world was going on. Our new apartment is on a fairly main street but it isn't THE main street.  So we are enjoying the quiet.

This kid, before I asked to take his picture was smoking a cigarette with a bonnet on his head and a bib around his neck. I thought that would have almost made a funnier picture.  

much better

Benjamin

Benjamin got a nasty little burn on Tuesday it goes up in to his hairline a ways I am glad he didn't turn and get it on his chest or anything. When this picture was taken it was already 2 days old. It wasn't quite bad enough to go to the hospital. (Mostly because I hate Ukranian hospitals) But it is healing well. He turned off the burner on the stove and then thought he might try to poor the coffee. If we had taken him to the hospital they would have tied him up and treated it with iodine (which is not recommended anymore, but here they don't know that) and probably kept him for three or four days, and hospitals quite frankly are not the cleanest places to be. They keep them clean here, but the hospital is where everybody takes all their sicknesses. To me it just seems like it would be smarter to treat it and send the patient home. In the States they try to keep hospital stays to a minimum, here they like to keep you as long as they possibly can. Benjamin was sick with something last year, we weren't sure if it was sour milk or a pesticide that didn't get washed off of an apple. They treated it by running an IV, then they gave him some medication, and he was doing much better, whatever they did it worked. What I was complaining about was after that they wanted to keep in the hospital for another two weeks while they administered his medication. We convinced them we would give it to him at home, and they let us go. Actually he only needed his medication for two days after that. I met a young lady  at the hospital who was walking with her little son in the garden who had been there for ,I can't remember how long, and had to stay for another however long, (I think it might have been a total of a month) because the kid didn't want to drink his water with the nasty medication in it. Anyway, I was thankful Benjamin didn't get burned badly enough to need to go. We had been cleaning it with Hydro Peroxide, but found out that, that is no longer recommended either. So just soap and water and putting Vitamin E and Bacitracin on it. He is already back to his old self. I just hope he doesn't get a scar from it.