SEND

Here is some information on SEND (The Organization that I will be heading to the Ukraine with) Check out their main site, with this link...http://www.send.org/
and heres their link on specific Ukraine...http://www.send.org/ukraine/index.htm

Heres some info on their social culture:

Social Landscape
Ukraine has almost as many people as France, Italy, or the United Kingdom, but neighboring Russia has three times as many people! During the days of the tsars and the subsequent Soviet era, government policies of land development and "Russification" drastically changed the ethnic make-up of Ukraine. Ukrainians traveled east to "homestead" in Far East Russia, and ethnic Russians were moved into Ukraine in order to weaken Ukrainian nationalist feeling. Today ethnic Ukrainians make up about 73 percent of Ukraine's population.
About 22 percent of the people are ethnic Russians. Other ethnic groups include Jews, Belarusians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, and Romanians. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, Russian was the country's official language. After independence, Ukrainian regained its place as the official language of Ukraine. The Ukrainian alphabet is Cyrillic and similar to, though not identical to, the Russian alphabet. Ukrainian speakers can often understand Russian speakers, and vice versa. Other languages spoken in Ukraine include Polish, Romanian, and Hungarian.

Sumy, Ukraine

Here is some information on Sumy-the region or province of Ukraine where I will most likly be! Sorry about the map quality, but this gives you a general idea of how the province itself, is laid out.
Area - 23,800,000 sq. kmPopulation - 1,384,000

The Sumy oblast was established on January 10, 1939. It includes 7 towns of the oblast subordination and 18 districts, 20 townships of the district subordination, 20 settlements of urban type, 1479 villages. The oblast center is the town of Sumy founded some four centuries ago. The town harmoniously combines antiquity and modernity, it boasts high tech industrial works, unique cathedrals with beautiful fountains, institutions of higher learning, nice recreation areas.The oblast is rich in mineral resources. Among them are oil (30.5% of the total oil reserves of Ukraine), natural gas, peat, also the nonmetallic minerals like phosphates, rock and potash salt, gypsum, lime, marl, glass sand, mineral paints (mainly ochre), construction sands and stone. 165 rivers flow through the oblast with the total length - 5444 km. All of them belong to the Dnipro basin. The "enchanted" Desna, the legendary Seim, Sula and Psel, Vorskla are the biggest rivers of the oblast. The water of these rivers is used for local foundry production, for chemical and textile industries. The forest area accounts for 387 thou. ha. There are different kinds of woods in local forests. Coniferous stands make up 43%, hardwoods - 45%, softwoods - 12%.

Check out the following link for a few pictures of Sumy (my own pictures will come in a few months!!

http://www.tripwolf.com/en/galleries/media/ext/2638576/381021/Ukraine/Sumy?3#top

Check out http://g.web.umkc.edu/gusako/sumy/sumy.html for more pictuers and history on the area!

Thanks for you Prayers and support!