the lamest prayer ever!

last night as i was lying awake in bed, unable to sleep thinking about all the things in the previous post, i prayed one simple prayer...

"Daddy," i said,  "please just help me to do something i can be proud of."

...and this is when He winked at me as if to say, "and this is where we'll begin, leslie."

good grief.  if i've never really understood why that wise and faithful Father of mine hates pride i do now.  

so we're working on bringing my heart to a point of caring nothing of myself and only of His glory.  somehow i have this feeling that that's really what it's all about.

to the One who has the power to heal

do you ever feel completely overwhelmed by the evil in the world, and desperately want to do something to help?  ...the kidnapped children trained to be soldiers, the aborted babies with no voice to cry for help, the millions of orphaned children, the raped women who are treated as outcasts...the list goes on and on.

and then when you feel like your heart just can't take anymore, while sipping a chai tea latte in panera (i thought i'd throw in a little irony for you), you get pummeled with the reality that all of the hatred, the selfishness, the stupidity and jealousy and short sightedness that is at the root of all the pain in this world, is alive in...you!  it's a hard realization to come to.

Lord, it's so easy for me to want to heal the pain that plagues this world i live in.  but help me to see the wickedness in my own heart and let You, the only One who can heal, take over.  i can't help on my own.  all my efforts, all my good intentions, all my hard work would be completely useless if i don't let You do the fixing.  because the evil i see in the world, is in me too, so how do i expect to have any power over it on my own?  oh Daddy!  fill me with You so i can make some sort of difference in this heart-sick place called earth.

God bless the cold...but only when there's heat!

what do you think these things have in common?

-things you wear to play in the snow, you say? no, i don't think so

-great fashion statements? hmmm...not quite.

-how about what is completely necessary to cover yourself with when sitting on your couch or bed under four blankets drinking hot chocolate or hot coffee or hot tea or hot water for that matter...anything to shake the cold? by jove, i think we have a winner!

yes, i'm afraid it's true. this tuesday, after what seemed like years of 0 degree nights (tiny exaggeration) we finally received heat! but up until that moment we spent our evenings huddled under our covers with hats gloves and (callie)3 sweatshirts, yelling to each other from our rooms so we could have some sort of conversation without freezing to death!

when i called nicor to say, "we have no GAS!" they calmly sent me jumping through hoops, cut off my desperate please with robotic tones of "hold on ma'am, let me look at your account" and refused to send someone to help us until just this week when, of course, it's too warm too need heat. in the words of rebekah and her mother, "honest to pete!" (i like that saying. it's almost as good as 'holy monkeys')

i told callie we should take a picture of us in our pathetic state to remember it for always, and she replied with horror in her eyes, "i'm not taking a picture looking like this!" (fyi: cold apartments make for very tired, disheveled looking roommates)

maybe someday i'll talk her into striking a pose for old time's sake, though right now it may be too soon to bring up such a bitter memory. but if she ever yields, you can bet it'll be posted here for all to see!

in the spirit of the season, let's all be reminded to give thanks for the many blessing we have...like HEAT!

one way connie kendall is cooler than me...but only the one!

so, as much as i love 'adventures in odyssey' there's something about the beloved constance kendall (with all her great points) that can sometimes be, let's face it, just a little annoying.  

now i don't mean to offend any die hard odyssey fans out there, because trust me, i could take you all in the fanatical department, but let's be honest, here.  we're among friends.  we can all face the reality regarding our friend, connie...that from her 'over the top' emotions to her constant need to know everything, ms. kendall can be a little overbearing.  

however, the other night i was listening to an old episode(yes, i still listen to them...on a regular basis...and proud of it!) and i was struck with a profound and deeply troubling realization...at least in one way connie kendall is cooler than me!

boy, that takes humility to say!  whew.  reeling in that pride!

anyway, the episode was where connie mistakenly wins a date with a tv star, chad something, and the whole time he's trying to impress her and she's like good grief, stop trying to impress me and just be yourself!

hmmm....this is where i thought, she's way cooler than me.  let's take a look at how i act given a similar situation:

mates of state is my most beloved of all bands consisting of jason hammel(husband-drummer-vocals-daddy of 2) and kori gardner(wife-keyboards-organ-vocals-mommy of the same 2) ...i only stalk them a little 

...anyway, at one of their concerts i was able to talk to kori just a bit as she made her way out of the building (it was in a coffee house so pretty low key) and this is how it went...

(imagine me speaking kind of high and fast paced)

me: (tap tap on the shoulder)

her: yes?

me: hi, i'm leslie and i just wanted to quick meet you

her: hi, i'm kori (hehe, as if i didn't know that!)

me: i think you guys are awesome!

her: thanks (sweet and slightly awkward smile)

me: congratulations on your new baby! (their first kid was about 6 mo. at this time)

her: thanks, actually that's where i'm heading to now.

me: oh, yeah sure!  it was nice to meet you!

her: yeah, you to.

i think she probably remembers me...don't you?  i'm actually pretty convinced that we would be great friends if we ever hung out together...hmmm...

 

my dad's the coolest!

(i'm beautiful in this picture, i know, but it's all i had)

~

so, let's see, about a month ago my dad was on 'moneylife' (check here...he aired 9/18 and it's called 'blessings from brokeness') yeah, he's kind of famous. (emphasis on kind of) but i was able to listen to it online and and i have to admit, i was brought to tears, which is a rare occurance indeed...see here(#9) and here(5th paragraph) and here and here(#5)

~

while i was listening, i was struck with the overwhelming knowledge of how truly blessed i am...

~

1. for amazing Godly parents who seek Him daily

~

2. for a dad who is transparent enough to get emotional on live radio

~

3. for the opportunity to use all that my good ol' dad (and you too, mom) has taught me and hopefully be able to someday say i'm like him.

~

thanks, dad! i love you!

another 7

okay, so i've already done this (see here) but i guess, for the sake of my dear friend sarah, i'll submit myself to a little post. boy are you all lucky, because you don't get the privilege of learning just 7 weird facts about me, but 14. i know, pretty cool, eh?

ahem...

8. sometimes for dinner i eat an entire package of crackers...and that's all.

proof that i need to grocery shop more often than i do and take food to work...other than crackers.

9. (sarah this one's for you) big spiders scare me so badly they can make me cry

i feel really kind of stupid about that one, but what can you do? sometimes when i play 'jak and daxter' (since i'm assuming not many jr high boys are reading this, i'll expound...that's a video game) there's this on part called 'the spider cave' with really fake looking spiders and i can hardly handle it. oh, and the 'lord of the rings' video game is horrible because the spiders are actually lifelike! when i saw that movie and shelob (the spider monster) came i sat there with my knees pulled up to my chest, covered my tear filled eyes and chanted over and over, "i can't handle this!" yeah, it's that bad. it all started when i saw "arachnophobia" when i was around 5 years old. apparently it was effective!

10. i don't really enjoy chocolate...except for maybe once a month...(if i was a bashful person i'd be blushing right now)

actually, i really don't like plain m&m's but if i start eating them i seriously cannot stop... it's like i'm a masochist (that may be just a bit over dramatic)

11. i've always wanted to shave my head...just once

alas and alack it will never happen, because my mother would disown me. i'll just have to wait till she's either dead or delirious...but by then i'll probably (hopefully) be old enough that my hair will be falling out on its own, which isn't quite what i had in mind.

12. after attempting to learn russian for over 3 years now, i'm still not fluent enough have a conversation with anyone unless it's a very basic conversation about fruit or clothes

enough said about that...it's too depressing to talk about.

13. my best friends are mom and dad

yeah, i'm that freak kid that would rather spend any given evening with her parents than her friends.  mom actually had to force me to live away from home my jr. year of college.  i moved out to go to community college my first two years and then came back home when i transferred (i know it's usually the other way around) and i thought i was just going to move back in with mom and dad...but my mother didn't dig it.  good thing, too, because i probably would have become a recluse.

14. my body is wired to hawaii's time zone

i have always had major issues sleeping at night and getting up in the morning.  it's actually pretty frustrating sometimes, because i'll really try to get good sleep and go to bed at like 11:00, but as soon as my head hits that pillow i'm wired and then can't sleep till about 1:00 or 2:00.  but one time my family went to hawaii and i was totally blown away because every night i was dead tired at 10:00 and woke up naturally at 6:00!   it was easy as that.  that's when i realized...i was intended for a life in hawaii!  what can i say but, "Lord, where You send me i will go!"

as far as people to send to, i think i'm going to skip that part, because i don't read enough blogs and i think all the blogs i do read have already been hit...well most of them.

for your viewing pleasure

although my wounds have healed, thanks to my flare for drama, i present you with a pictorial demonstration of my past pains:

"oh the pain!"

  

"i need towels to stop the bleeding!"

"oh, it still hurts!"

 

"bitter woe!"

"there's only one thing that can help me now..."

"dora!"

the pain! the agony! the HORROR!

disclaimer: for those of you who think my title is just an overly dramatic metaphor and not a warning, be prepared. (don't worry tam, there is no mention of the b-word, so you may proceed without fear.)

so about 2 minutes ago i was unloading the kiln...well, actually the kiln was unloaded yesterday, but all the pieces were sitting on the floor because i unloaded it in a hurry and i didn't do any of the stuff your supposed to do after you unload everything from the kiln, like...remove the stilts and sand the stilt marks on the piece...

okay, so i realize that those of you reading this who have no ceramic or kiln using experience (probably a fair 95 %) might not have any clue what i'm talking about, so i'm going to back up a bit and preface this story with some pictorial instructions:

1. these here are kilns. actually they're paragon kilns, which we happen to use at the shop. (the monstrously sized one that's hidden partially by the short fat kiln is the new one that almost didn't fit through the door. you can tell how big it is by it's ginormous lid. it's so big that if i'm standing in front of it i can't even reach the handle to close it!)

2. these are stilts. you place one of these guys under the pottery and it holds it up on it's little metal prongs (sharp little buggers!)
3. this is me last summer loading a kiln. i'm about to put that plate on a stilt in the kiln. man my hair was long...and quite unruly!
4. these are stilt marks on the bottom of a vase. see how there's three little hole marks. that's where the piece was sitting on the metal prongs. when you unload a kiln you have to take a sanding stone (or a dremmel tool if you're not me and deathly afraid of power tools) and sand down the marks so they aren't sharp to the touch.
okay, are we all on the same page now?

so i was removing the stilts (which sometimes stick to the bottoms of the pieces to the point that you have to give them a fairly good yank to get them off) and the little guy was not coming. well, what typically happens in that situation happened and i ended up puncturing my my thumb with the stilt. don't worry folks, this is a normal, almost daily occurance. HOWEVER...

today was a little different simply because i saw a little glisten when i looked at the very tiny cut that was slightly under my finger nail(ugh), MEANING...

i had i tiny piece of glass in my tiny cut. (for those of you who don't know this, when your pottery is fired the glaze covering it basically becomes glass.) without hesitation i used my very short fingernails to pick the tiny glass particle out of my thumb. this is when i REALIZED...

the tiny piece of glass was actually a little chunk of glass that was about 70% buried in my thumb, and pulling it out was a lot grosser and more painful than i had bargained for. UUGGGHHH!

i proceeded to whimper around the store while clamping a paper towel around my thumb. thankfully, at this point in the day the shop was empty, so i was allowed to be as big of a baby as i wanted to be. WELL...

now i can still feel the dull pain, but thanks to the dora band-aids my mother very hesitantly bought for me (she thinks i'm too old for them, of all things!) i'm 'all better'. and maybe my title is still a little overly dramatic, but after some responses to my 'back' post i couldn't take any chances.

the kiln wars of '08

sorry folks, no jedi can save us this time. there's nothing obi-wan or yoda can do to protect us from...

(insert 'gasps' and 'shrieks of terror')

so here's the deal, ever since...oh, let's say the beginning 2008...we've had major issues with our two faithful (...ly failing) kilns. a few months ago, both broke down at the same time, leaving us kilnless and a little behind on getting things done for about half a week. thankfully the problem was remedied before too long.

since then they've been going out one at a time...off and on...back and forth...but always leaving us with one working kiln UNTIL (right there, when i said, "until" i pictured an over excited science teacher explaining an equation to a classroom of bored high schoolers who all jump awake when he says "UNTIL...the ether mixes with the hydrogen creating a molecular explosion!" or something like that. kind of like this guy...)

about two weeks ago both kilns went completely kaput. well, one went a little sooner but i kept forgetting to call the kiln guy so buy the time he came both kilns were dead and would stay dead for a full WEEK until he was able to get the appropriate parts!

'lovely!' i said, 'what a brilliant concept! a pottery shop with no way to fire pottery! hallelujah! this will revolutionize the pottery industry'...either that or revolutionize my career path, if you know what i mean.

so for a week, one of the busiest since we opened by the way, we had no working kiln. finally the beloved day of renewal came when our kiln man fixed whatever needed to be fixed and went on his merry way. UNTIL...friday when one of the kilns broke down again. yeah, i know! ridiculous!

so yesterday he fixed whatever needed to be fixed, this time with a paper clip...hmmm, does something seem a little fishy here? i don't know, maybe the guy's mcgyver

well, while he was here the new kiln, the one we ordered when the other two weren't working, came. 'yey!' thought i, 'a helping hand to get the kiln inside!' apparently his hands were not enough...

since this post is already getting ridiculously long i'll cut to the chase:

1. the trucker didn't have the right equipment to get the kiln off the truck, so the nice big burly men from our neighboring stores had to come lend a hand to the poor helpless girl and the old kiln fixer man

2. once the kiln was off the truck it wouldn't fit through the door, you know, because we got a bigger kiln that could hold more pottery and would run more efficiently. smart, right?

3. two hours later, thanks to my super hero brother-in-law, our kiln guy, who by this time looked like this:

and his brother-in-law (this was definitely a family affair) all the hinges and handles were off the kiln, the weather strips were off the door, and the kiln was safely inside (taking up half the back room, might i add)

now we just have to get the other kilns unloaded and move this one in place, so mr kiln man can come back and hook it up. i don't know if that was as exhausting for you to read as it was for me to tell, but...

tired am i!

oi, oi and oi!

so my big sis, jami, is wanting to hear some good stories from her friends about how their children embarrass them. well, i have no children, but i have been embarrassed by many. however, my favorite embarrassing little kid story happened when i went swimming with my little cousin. (some of you may already be cringing...and with good reason) she was probably about 6 and i was around 13...now, for those of you who don't know, i had mom hips even back then...ugh! (no offense to the majority of mothers that read this blog...but you know what i mean, right?) there's something a little unnerving about maturing fully at age 12 and then not changing AT ALL for the next 12 years and counting.

anyway, back to the point of the story.

we were playing chicken off the diving board with our other cousins, and both of us were standing in line when she looked at me with this really perplexed expression...
(are you ready for this?)

cassie: leslie?
me: yeah?
cassie: is your swimming suit too small or are your legs just fat?
(SHABAM!!! i mean come on! are you serious?!)
me with a look of shock mixed with 'yeah, i know': my legs are just fat. (thwarted by a six year old)

funny thing was, it didn't really bother me. it actually made me laugh really hard...while i was nervously looking around to make sure no one heard what we were talking about.

she's almost 18 now and i wonder if she even remembers saying that...probably not. oh, but i remember! boy, do i ever!

моя семья и друзья, yes another post about ukraine...whoopie!

i felt the urge to share some pictures of my dearest friends in ukraine. oh how i love you all! let me count the ways:

sveta is my li'l sis who i met 4 years ago when she was 14 and just beginning her walk with Christ. now at 18 she is living at the transition home, studying fashion merchandising at a tech school and is growing into quite a Godly woman. her face is one i picture and miss on a regular basis when i'm here in the states. i crazy love this kiddo!

nastya is my new li'l sis who i just had the opportunity to meet this year. she's sixteen and so far has not opened her heart to Jesus, but i sense that there is still a softness to her spirit. i just pray that God will penetrate her fears, her (no doubt)pain, her history and show her how He, and only He, can use all the crap that satan's throw at her for great great GREAT good. my sweet nastya, i love you!
vanya is my super studly pal. he gave me a book of ukrainian folk songs and taught me one that we sang together. there's a video of this lovely event and when i get it i'll post it so you can all partake and be blessed. in the past year vanya has committed his life the Christ, been baptized in a local church and is a living testament of God's awesome ability to turn lives around. yey, vanya!

the rest of the pics are of my fellow americans who were able to enjoy ukraine's many blessings, #1 (at least in david's mind) being the hotel's complimentary juice in the lobby. hurray for free juice!
just some of this year's team members being their charming selves.
what a stellar group! so refined...
and of course, i must not fail to mention my fellow gramm house kids on the trip. this is where mom and barb and barb say, "awww!"

HELP!!! (red is for anger)

i'm just going to say it...

I'M SERIOUSLY ANNOYED!!!!

there! hah! i said it and i'm not going to take it back!

i know that as someone who works in retail i am supposedly trained to grin and bare anything. well...it's not true. i cannot grin and bare it. i will not grin and bare it anymore.

here's the deal. there's no real reason why i'm so annoyed right now other than the fact that i find every child that enters this building incredibly irritating.

how many times can you ask the same question that i answered five minutes ago before you asked it?

how many times will you interrupt me with a question that i would answer if you'd just chill out for a second.

how many meaningless questions can you ask about everything under the sun that i could not care less about?

how many times can you say "like like like like like what do you like like like like do with like like like like like..." (that one just happened. and i sat here in mid 'anger' post, smiled and answered patiently, while secretly giving her evilly evil eyes!)

how many times can you ask "where do i put this?" only to hear me once again say, "leave EVERYTHING at the table. I WILL TAKE CARE OF ALL OF IT!" (that one just happened too, only without all the caps.)

oh goody two adults finally came into the store without children! let there be praise and thanksgiving!

the good news is that i will be leaving tomorrow and not coming back again till wednesday! yippeee! get me away from these people!

the bad, the ugly, and the ocheen ocheen good!

we did this little relay race while at the orphanage in ukraine.

the basic idea was to dress up like this:crawl through this: and end up over there:
where you would proceed to strip off the ugly ladies' clothing and hand it to the next person who'd crawl back through to the next person and so on..


well who should be one of the lucky partakers of this blessed event but yours truly! i thought to myself, "hey, a challenge that i can actually do!" as apposed to the one where you had to cross monkey bars and then do a pull up to try to eat candy that was attached to the bars. i know! there was no way!


i'm not the fastest gal in the world, but still, i thought i could manage. so i waited my turn to make my team proud.


here's where a small problem arose. the elastic wasted floral skit that i was supposed to put on in lightning speed didn't seem to be terribly fond of the idea of fitting over my hips! i stopped for a second, while alena said in her sweet, desperate, heavily accented voice, "please leslie! hurry!", prayed a quick prayer and "oh thank you, Jesus!" with a swift and forceful tug the skirt was fitted nicely around my waste.


the hard part was over(so i thought). i quickly threw the rest of the articles on and dove through the opening in the trash bag tunnel. at this point i felt a sharp pain in my back and heard a multitude of ukrainian gasps follow me, but i didn't look back, nor did i stop to find out what was wrong. i laughed in the face of adversity and quickened my pace to the child waiting at the other end of the tunnel. (thankfully, the skirt came off quicker than it went on!)

so once i had the chance to stop, watch my teammates finish the relay (we won, by the way) i realized that the sharp pain i felt earlier was intensifying quite nicely. a little later i found my mom and showed her my back so i could find out if it was really anything to worry about(the sight of which she gasped in horror).


so here's what happened. i'm going to need some audience participation in order for you to visualize this fully. everyone, take your hand and make it into a fist. now, take a pen or pencil, anything straight like that will work. hold the pen/pencil flat against your pointer finger knuckle (keep your hand in a fist!) and strum it down your knuckles almost like you would on one of those wood blocks. if you do this right it should make a kind of a clicking noise. okay, now imagine that your knuckles where vertebrae (jami, since your on the computer i'm going to safely assume your sitting down...that's good) and the pen is a metal bar and that the human the the vertebrae are a attached to is going at great speed while scraping her vertebrae on the metal bar. sounds fun, doesn't it.


later when i looked at my back, thinking all i would see was scrapes, instead i saw three circles where there was no skin(where each vertebrae scraped). yeah, the best part was that all week people would come up to me and pat me on my lower back! whatever happened to patting on the UPPER back. you know, on the shoulders! doesn't that seem more normal anyway?

but alas, as much as that was bad, this...

and this...

and this...and this...
was ocheen ocheen good!

one year ago today:

i read this in my journal and realized it was dated exactly a year ago today, so i thought i'd share:

June 30, 2007

I love to watch the sky at dusk, or dawn, for that matter, when the sky's so many varieties of hues and shades.  Tonight it is a brilliant orange, but only in a small portion of the sky.  It streaks across the horizon with vibrance, leaving the rest of the sky a mournful dark blue, which has it's own beauty, just a different kind.  "Oh, Daddy, Your world is so much bigger than me and my small desires," I thought and suddenly had the urge to cry.  I like it when I have the ability to cry or even just the emotion to.  It shows a sense of tenderness.  I have gone through times in my life when I never cried and almost always it was a season of selfishness, or the beginnings of a hard heart.  So these times of sudden impulse, when my heart feels on the verge of breaking, are times I cherish.  It's in these times my Savior feels so close I could reach out and touch Him, throw my arms around Him and bury my tear stained face in His chest.  Tonight, for this short moment I felt all of this.  Me heart cried out to Jesus, "sometimes I feel so insignificant!"  But I know that though I am small, and though I sometimes feel obsolete, He has made it possible for me to do great things.  Only in Him can I find true worth.  Only in Him am I worthy of anything good, in this lifetime or the next.

okay, so i get a little wordy and emotional when i journal, but all the same, as i read this it made me not quite so ashamed of how emotional i've been lately(that's right i'm still fighting the ukrainian blues!).  in fact in made me cherish it, which is a nice turn of events.  

why it's cooler to post from ukraine

so i'm here on my last day in the great HARKOV, or KAPKXIV, or KHARKOV, or XAPKOB, XAPKIB... 

actually i'm not entirely sure any of those are right (mom this is your que to correct me),  but needless to say there are a plethora of spellings for this city.

anyhow, i just got onto blogger.blogspot and all the little words along the top, like 'sign in' or 'sign out' if you're logged in, were in ukrainian.  cool beans!  now i'm logged in so it's back to boring english, but man i was living for the 15 seconds it took me to find the right word for 'sign in.'

i like ukraine.  in case anyone out there is wondering...it's true.  every year i come here.  every year i fall in love all over again with the kids and the staff.  every year it is harder and harder for me to go back home.

when saying goodbye to the kids today it was the typical hugs and kisses and fighting back tears.  this to which i was successful until i finished hugging nastia and realized she was bawling.  then i couldn't help it.  but when vanya came up and scolded me for crying i professed that i was done and wouldn't cry anymore.  and i didn't...until i got into my hotel room.  abby, my roomie for the week, was in the shower and i was curled up on my bed sobbing like a baby.

the truth is that a big part of my heart is here and when i have to leave, it just kind of hurts a little(or a lot), because i have to leave a part of me behind.

okay, enough feeling sorry for myself.  instead i'm going to tell you a funny little story that just popped into my head right now and made me smile(which is really great considering how depressed i'm feeling).

so we were all at the transition home (roughly, it's the really nice home for good kids who have graduated from the orphanage.  this way they don't have to live in the horrible dorms) yesterday and sveta (my little sis for the past 4 years) took me up to her bedroom to paint my nails. (just wait, it gets girlier)  pretty soon galya (her sister) and natasha (her friend) come up and together we went through sveta's perfume and clothes(she made this adorable little jacket that i totally want).  

sveta pulled out a picture of a kitten and i said it was "cute".  then i taught them how children are cute and women are beautiful, and when they asked me what a good looking man would be called i said cute, too.  they seemed really confused so i said the most suggestive ca-u-ute i could and they all giggled which made me think they understood.  either that or they thought i was mentally handicapped.  i never can quite tell...(refer to earlier post)

so then they broke out a picture of all the boys in their church and told me who each of them liked (well, natasha told me who galya liked and galya told me who sveta and natasha liked and each girl giggled and tried to deny their crush but, of course, were not at all convincing)  then they asked me which boys i thought were cute and i proceeded to point to each of their crushes.  i figured it was safest.

they also asked me if i liked any boy and i said 'no' and they wouldn't believe me.  so i said, "there are boys i think are cute, but i don't like them" and galya, who speaks the best english of the three stroked my hair and said, "i understand" and then i said "but i'm happy" and galya (continuing to stroke my hair, i think because it was straightened and she really like it that way) said "ya tosha" which means 'me too.'

(now this was the fun part)

then i said, "men...who needs 'em?"

this really confused them, so i said it slower and with slightly different words and they all laughed and said "da!" (yes) and then i shouted out "girl power!" and they all laughed and whooped in agreement!

so later that night we were eating at mcdonalds (i know, not terribly authentic) and sveta said, "bathroom? ...you come?" to me and i was like, "tee hatchesh?" (basically 'do you want me to?') to which she promptly said "okay, let's go." 

from all of this i have concluded one very important fact...girls speak a universal language...whether it's painting nails, talking about cute boys, boy bashing, or even going to the bathroom together...we can all still relate to each other...maybe not as ukrainians or americans...but as girls.