I'm Here! (Or There?)

Some of you may or may not know this but I'm currently in Ukraine for the summer visiting my family. In other words, if I'm terrible at updating my blog you now know why.

The flight over here was fine but I chose to sit next to my younger brother which was a BIG mistake. In simpler terms, the first hour consisted of non-stop talking, the second of complaining how weird the "green stuff" in our dinner tasted, and in the third hour he decided he was meant to be British so he said really random stuff like "I like trays. I really, really like trays." And even now as I'm writing this with my brother reading over my shoulder he keeps saying that is wasn't "trays" that he said but "trays". Right. I'm really sorry. (Pure sarcasm.)

Anyways, I'm having a good time here. It's nice to see all my cousins and grandparents and everyone. Some of the food here is quite weird in the way they package it. For example, they put the milk in these small paper envelopes that are coated inside with wax stuff so that the milk doesn't leak through. Very weird. The juice over one litre here is also packaged in these giant versions of those juice boxes you normally take to school. The only difference is that instead of drinking the juice from a hole in the box with a straw, there's this weird open-close thing.

Next week we're planning on going to the Black Sea for a few days to vacation. I'm pretty excited as I've only been to a real beach with actual sand and stuff (lakes don't count) once in my life.

A few times a year I go into these phases where I'm obssesed with something. It can be a sport, a craft - anything really - that I get so attached to that I end up spending hours every day at the computer or library researching that one thing. Lately, I've been really obssessed with sea glass. Yeah, I know that's kind of odd but it's a lot better then when I was in love with LUSH. Or what about my Hamtaro phase? (Granted, I was only nine at the time.) Anyways, does ayone know if you can find sea glass in the Black Sea? I tried Googling it but I only came up with a bunch of articles discussing black sea glass. Like, as in the colour. Not what I'm looking for.

Before I go I just want to recommend a really cool blog that I found out about a while ago. Kay Cassidy, the author of The Princess Society, recently started an author blog that is currently revolving around a Teen Author Challenge. In her own words, "If you’re an aspiring author of fiction for teens and tweens, this special feature is just for you! I’ll be sharing exclusive writing tips from fabulous YA and middle grades authors, talking about the ins and outs of writing a novel from start to finish, and offering links to great online resources that’ll help you grow your writing career. Get all the details here." It's a marvelous blog that I would totally urge you to check out, even if you don't want to become a writer!

I hope everyone's having a great summer!

-Iryna