Even though Americans may be 5,000 miles away from home, we still know how to throw down for the 4th of July. I meant to write about this earlier but since I don’t have the means to live blog anything unless it’s live blogging my own live blog (RECURSION!) due to my internet situation, it took some time to get caught up with it. Here’s a little run down of our throw down.

Who: PCV from the Sumy Oblast
When: 4th of July evening
What: Celebrating America
Where: Candibina (a small pond in Konotop with a decent beach)
Why: Because it’s in the Constitution

Next time you hear me even thinking about throwing a party for something, remind me that I’m not a party planner. I tend to stress about things and either take them too far or not far enough. Fortunately, this erred on the side of too far.

I turned 2 kg of chicken into roughly 4 kg of shish kabob (magic? or vegetables? You decide) and brought the grill. I merely suggested people bring food and drinks. And they did. Oh how they brought food and drinks.

There were also a couple of baseball gloves and a Frisbee. We ended up teaching some Ukrainians how to throw a baseball properly. Some of the guys jumped in the pond (even though they were warned against the water). There might be a photo of Brian standing in his underwear next to little kids also in their underwear because of his jumping in the lake. No pedophile.

We grilled for a grand total of five hours. We drank to America. I started a moving rendition of the National Anthem which turned into a marathon of singing songs about America.

Then there were fireworks. We had sparklers on crack and roman candles. There were also two long tubes that shot glitter because Brian didn’t know what they were when he was buying them. We may have accidentally aimed a few roman candles at some Ukrainians who we didn’t see in the dark. No harm done, fortunately.

Before the night was over, there was a circle entitled, “Pull for America.” The rules were you had to state something awesome about America then chug some honey pepper vodka before passing to the next person in the circle. The bottle hardly made it around the circle twice.

At some point, I don’t remember when exactly, I was pushing Swisher Sweets like a crack dealer. When I was home last year, I brought two packs back with me and I haven’t smoked them that often. This was a good method to take them out. But seriously, I gave everyone a free sample and they came back for more (on the house, of course). Either I’m an excellent dealer or people just like smoking while drinking.

It was great fun and I wish everyone could have been there with us, but then I would have stressed about how we were going to cook enough food for everyone on such a tiny grill. It’s probably better that you were with us. It’s not that I don’t like you, I just like my sanity. Now, enjoy some photos.

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Oh, and because I’m a nice guy, I baked a batch of chocolate chip muffins in advance for to make our mornings a little easier.