Snow, snow, snow!

7 hrs of snow

We were starting to wonder if all the stories we heard about the weather here were fabricated to keep people away…..it hasn’t been below freezing since the first of October and the days have been warm enough for a light jacket, it’s actually been nicer here than back home. Well….the snow has started flying and by the predictions we could have 30 inches by the end of the week (after 8hrs we have a foot).  Joan of Artic has made her maiden voyage (my winter boots are called Joan of Arctic and they are AWESOME)!   The temperatures have fallen to 15F and are expected to fall to -5F in the next few days (Thank you Grandma for all the warm clothing). Wow! What happened?! We’ve been told all along to mentally prepare for winter, I can see why; life doesn’t stop or get easier it just gets colder and longer and the paths now become narrow troughs and we’ve been told that we won’t see the ground again until March. Of course the girls are excited as can be and they were actually disappointed that the clouds took a breath before the next snow fall. I have to admit, I am also excited, so hopefully that will carry us through for a few months until we get tired of it. Oh yeah, don’t forget we don’t have a dryer, so all these wet clothes that we use everyday has presented a whole new challenge.

our cottage at first break in the weather....its -20C!!!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

 

The house is decorated, the snow has fallen and the Christmas music is playing……need more?

We have always had the biggest fresh Christmas tree we could physically put into our home without scratching the ceiling and decorate it with over a thousand little lights and hundreds of ornaments! The whole day is devoted to this event; from picking it, strapping it to the roof and getting it into the house it has always been an adventure in itself. Even Rylie was looking for the James Family Christmas tree this year; she spotted a 25’ spruce that she decided would be the perfect tree. We told her that it was too big and couldn’t fit in our house (then I heard a voice in my head that said “it’s not going in our yard, Russ, its going in our living room” and then I took a quick moment to consider the possibility). In the rush and craziness of packing, Christmas was a second thought but we managed to pack a tree that we purchased for the girls’ room during the holiday time (after they kept stealing and decorating the trimmings from the tree); this certainly was a change for our family to have the main tree be an artificial 3’ tree. Coming out of the box it really did look like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree; the tree is prelit and very scrawny with only a few limbs to unfold and “plump up”. However, once we decorated it with beads, ornaments and plugged it in, it took on the James Family look and feel and I think it started to look a bit more proud and grew at least another six inches. It’s a cute tree and it adds to the delight and realization we are in the middle of a new and amazing adventure, where things will not be “normal” for awhile. We watched White Christmas, drank cocoa and ate our traditional treats of fudge, Anna longs and Russian tea cakes (funny huh). By the end of the evening, we had completely forgotten that we were in a foreign land and even going to bed it seemed as if we were “home”. The Christmas magic had done its work and had come to rest in our home.

Thanksgiving in Slavutich

We love Thanksgiving, it’s good to have a special day to remember our blessings and be thankful for what we have; this was particularly true for us this year. We took time and thanked the Lord for this amazing opportunity, all the grace, love and protection He has shown us throughout these last several months. We are very thankful for our wonderful new friends, the old friends that continue to be a part of our lives and the family that continues to make us feel loved and missed.

Perfectly cooked!!



The Pelts and Boar



It was a different feeling here. The day at home typically starts with a light breakfast and then heading to host family’s home for a full day of eating, visiting, playing games, watching football and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. This year it was much more laidback, we decided to kick off the Christmas season a little early (for us) and watched a couple of Christmas films (in the absence of football and Macy’s it made the most sense).

We headed to Dima’s for our late afternoon feast not knowing what really to expect, but we found a very warm and country home feeling of a roaring fire place, pelts from fox and wolf on the wall. Not to mention the room was filled with the smells of perfectly roasted turkeys and traditional food from “home” (mashed potatoes, pies, dressing, and sweet potatoes). There was also, some not so traditional food…..but very tasty, sushi, smelly French cheeses, mushroom crepes and it certainly wouldn’t be Ukraine if each table didn’t have bottles of vodka and cognac (even the “childrens” table). At home we typically played games after dinner (cards, charades….); here we had a belly dancing show, which was nice and fun.

Although our Turkey Day was very different from normal and our family was greatly missed, we had a great deal to be thankful for and our night was filled with laughter, friendship and good will. In retrospect; it was much like home!

Chernobyl Tour

cutout of reactor #4. 



abandoned hotel of Pripyat



I'm not sure what to say. It is quite sobering and fascinating at the same time. I went into control room 1 and saw what control room 4 should still look like. It is funny how antiquated the controls look. I am still amazed that we sent men to the moon and back to earth again when we did! On the tour we learned the whole scenario of events that occurred on April 26, 1986. The incredible thing is that they guys in control room 1 did not necessarily know what was happening at reactor 4 right away. Our interpreter was 10 years old and lived in Chernigov at the time and he only learned about the disaster a couple days later over the world radio. We visited the once affluent town of Pripyat, now it is a total ghost town. This town was a completely modern town with all the amenities. The children had beautiful parks to play in, a May Day carnival was being set up, and they could buy ice cream and oranges! People from other towns would visit Pripyat for a special weekend! Now it is empty, vandalized, and overgrown. The most important thing to remember while touring Pripyat was to watch out for broken glass and avoid stepping on the moss (high concentration of cesium). We stopped at Chernobyl city (outside the 10 mile perimeter exclusion zone, where people live and work at the reactor for 15 days a month). It was pretty quiet; we took pictures of monuments to the heroes and even toured the zoo (thanks to Laurin Dodd). I still can't believe I was standing only a few 100 yards away from the number 4 reactor and looking at all the structures created to protect us from that mess and the amazing structure that is currently being built to help decommission it!

door to reactor #1

dont step on the moss

Remembering the tradgedy

Tony’s tour was a bit more in-depth, he had the chance to actually visit Control Room #4 and he roamed the halls of reactor #4. He said while you are standing on the site just in front of the reactor it was more massive than he imagined and he became more excited and amazed that he could be a part of this historical structure, even if it is to a small degree.









The reactor core configuration at the time of the accident





Kiev Redux

The "Motherland" Statue

One tired family on one long day….. The highlights: the Great Patriotic War Museum (WWII) fantastic and reverence awe, the Lavra (Kiev monastery and catacombs) more dead people but incredible history and a pharmacy museum of drugs of the past….let’s just say they did the same things our doctors did way back when and the brews were probably the same….eye of newt, wing of bat….all yours for the price of three cows! And we thought our health care was expensive. What scares me, is it hasn’t evolved a whole lot (not really, they now use electrical shock therapy)!

These are impressively large, Ithe gun is at head level.

Having fun!

Only one part of the brew...the eye of newt follows.....

The Big Top!

We are packed in like sardines, as wet as one too!

The Big Top came to town! This was another unique experience that is best described as WOW, not necessarily a good WOW, but deserves the title. Let’s start with a shoe horning of guests into a one ring circus tent erected in the town’s square (one could barely move…praying there was no calamity where people needed to evacuate). It happened to be pouring rain this day and besides standing in 2-3 inches of water outside waiting to get in, there was 2-3 inches inside the tent completely submerging the electrical cords for the sound, lighting, popcorn and cotton candy maker….ahh, thank goodness we have soaking wet submerged rubber soles on! The talent was good for the size of the event, we saw a tight rope walker….let's just say she was very flexible, a sword swallower, amazing farm animals that could do tricks of sorts (I never thought a 75lb pot belly pig would execute an obstacle course and chickens that were willing to be spun around in circles on hoops. It really was a good show and the clown between acts made all of us laugh even though we didn’t understand a single word. To keep it short, one could classify the whole event as a “circus”…but a three ring would have been more appropriate.

Entranced by the show!

Halloween

Having fun at Perspective school

This is always one of those holidays we could do without, but the kids love to dress up and get candy (what kid wouldn’t). As you know we try and make life seem as normal as possible for the kids while we are here, so we figured there were enough American families in Slavutich that we could organize a small trick or treating route. We introduced the Trick or Treating holiday to a few new people: one American couple whose wife hasn’t lived in the States and experienced the uniqueness of having kids come knock at your door and ask for candy, and one local who was eager to get candy for our cute kids! We ended up sharing our weird holiday event with some kids from the Perspective School who quickly understood the benefits of this strange cultural experience. All and all we had about 20 kids happy to be running around the town knocking on doors screaming “trick or treat”. We all had a good time and for eight houses the kids had candy for a month…….

The young American kids having a blast trick-or-treating!



A belly dancer and a gypsy



Leave it to the Professionals

Ah driving, we have only touched on this topic. When we moved to Ukraine, it was a drastic change to the way we drive in the States. The people in Ukraine drive very aggressive (sidewalks count as vehicle paths), Speed and “cutting” and even driving in the wrong lane for a “smoother” trip is the norm. I have had many trips to Kiev and the things I’ve seen still amaze and freighten me. I pray for the sure hand of the drivers and I’m always thankful to return home safely…….Egypt was a whole new experience, what I thought was crazy driving in Ukraine couldn’t hold a candle to these people. I think the only thing that is familiar is they drive on the “right” side of the road. Pedestrians do NOT have any type of right-of-way and hearing a hand slapped against the side of the bus was all part of the experience (we think it was on the side and not on the bottom of the bus…hee, hee...we think). One of our first clues of the insanity should have been after leaving the airport to the hotel (it was dark out); Nichole and I noticed that some people didn’t drive with headlights on and then “flashed” them at different times, very peculiar but we were too tired from the trip and excited to get to the resort that we didn’t think too much of it. But heading back from Luxor we learned a lot about Egyptian driving (more than we’ll blog about, we don’t want to scare the Grandparents). There is a middle lane on a two lane road, this is where you align the vehicle dead center of the faded painted center line and push the oncoming and ongoing traffic over (during a simultaneous pass of all the vehicles there’s all of six inches on either side of the middle vehicle). During night time driving Headlights are optional and actually not preferred to use.

The headlights are only used during passes (which occur at all times). This headlight thing also made for an interesting event called “crossing the street”, we noticed that as people started to cross the dark unlit street that all of a sudden multiple cars started “flashing” their headlights, warning of the approaching danger. This got us thinking what happens when you’re already in the middle of this road crossing? I think ultimately we didn’t want to know and didn’t bother to ask…..we figured somehow they made it without incident. The bumper sticker, “I don’t drive fast, I fly low” certainly came to mind multiple times as when there was a straight section of road; I think the speed rating on the tires was far exceeded. I am confident the Lord was keeping us safe and we had a lot of exhausted angels up there. All I can say to put in perspective was when we got home, it was a breath of fresh air to have “normal” driving with headlights and we commented on how nice it was to be driving back in Ukraine….yikes!

Luxor & Valley of the Kings

How interesting can 3400 year old ruins be? Well let me tell you, absolutely breath taking and fascinating! Nichole and I enjoy immensely history and archeology (If the Lord wills, perhaps someday we will find ourselves on an excavation site, sharing His name). Even if you don’t appreciate history, the shear massiveness and complexity of the Luxor Temple is unfathomable. To have seen it during its peak would’ve had to be more than mind boggling. The pillars of the great hall are about 40 feet high and 8 feet in diameter, hieroglyphs are etched on every wall, pillar and roof on this temple. Gold lined all the sanctuaries, pillars and some walls, precious stones and solid gold “gods” were everywhere. It truly is unfathomable how the Egyptians created these temples.

What can you say, how awesome?!

Every hieroglyph seemed a perfect copy of the one before and these are on 320 ton stones throughout the temple some as high as 80 feet (a mistake I’m sure would have been life ending, but these men had to be craftsmen like no other). Of course all that is left from this once great temple are bare broken walls of endless hieroglyphs telling of past stories. Some of the original colors can still be seen which further paints the picture of what it may have looked like, given the chance to let the mind wander, it doesn’t take long to imagine what it would have been like to see such a place.

The amazing thing is we were allowed to touch and run our fingers through the same carvings that the Pharos of the time idolized, and that a man carved 3400 years prior. We saw and touched the same stones that Joseph, Solomon, Alexander the Great and every other historical leader of the time saw and probably touched. I’m confident we stood on a spot where one of these men stood at one time.

A small break from the stone oven.

The stories are on the walls, so cool!

The Luxor Temple has history of being used as a Christian church and pictures of Christ, Paul and Mary is still seen to this day. This is just one stop in Luxor; we haven’t even talked about the other temples, the Valley of the Kings and the City of the Dead. Even today’s modern city of Luxor has its own tale to tell.
As you can imagine we could write pages and pages of these places, but I guess that’s what books, museums and the Discovery Channel is for. But we would recommend if you ever get a chance to visit this place you won’t regret seeing this part of human history.

The girls were real troopers for Mom and Dad’s big history lesson; they failed to grasp the full awesomeness of these big rocks with pictures on them and although they thought it was interesting, fun to run around and explore, the heat and beating sun took its toll on them and they quickly wanted to go back to the air-conditioned bus. I of course, was running around looking behind every wall, around every corner and under every rock I could find.
The City of the Dead was the same, the hot mountainous rocks full of graves didn’t thrill the girls too much (it was interesting too them for oh, twenty minutes), but pictures of weird half animal half man things and the thought of a dead person being at the end of the tunnel didn’t sit too well with them (no, all the mummies were safe at the museum) and in fact the girls would rather have stayed outside where it was a touch cooler and they had fresh air. But we dragged them down into the tombs for their enlightenment (I’m sure the therapy sessions will be interesting someday). We do have wonderful little girls, they indulged us little complaint and at least kept up with our unusually exuberant pace in the high heat.

Nearing the end, Ellie & Rylie weren't the only ones wiped out!

Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in these areas or at the museum, so, you’ll have to Google for some pictures, but it was every bit of as impressive as the Luxor Temple. The colors are still vibrant and original and there are many graves yet to find (they had actually found one a few months prior to our arrival and we saw the entrance and heard about some of the artifacts that were discovered). If you didn’t know, this is the same place in which King Tutankhamen (King Tut) was found.

Grave entrances of governors

Egyptian Desert

Welcome to Egypt! Egypt is 38662 square miles that’s about one and half Texas’, but only five percent of this country is inhabitable, the rest is desert. Now those of us that know the Tri-Cities is technically considered a desert (less than ten inches of rainfall per year), please know, we do NOT live in a DESERT. There is more greenness and vegetation in the remotest part of the Columbia Basin than there is in the remaining 95% of Egypt. The area where we were (Hurghada) hasn’t seen rain for three years.

We had an unusual moment when we were on our desert excursion, about a dozen rain drops fell (there were threatening looking clouds or I would have thought airplane)….we heard some people from the Bedouin tribe start the Arabic “ayeyeye” sound over it. WOW, it was like manna from heaven! The rocks, and mountains were so jagged, the only thing to erode these towering pinnacles is wind.

The desert excursion we were on was fascinating from the stand point we saw some territory of Egypt that we would not have otherwise seen. The day started with a speed bump riddled van ride to pick up other participants from other hotels (this was our only Russian tour). The day was to include, driving/riding four wheelers, spider cars, horses, camel and a jeep ride out to a Bedouin tribe. This trip was executed not exactly as described to us (now, remember we are in Egypt from a Russian travel agency, so I’m positive that has something to do with it). We had to purchase some scarves to keep the sand off our faces then we were shown the art of wrapping them on our heads (now we’re looking Egyptian). The four wheelers were boring for this Northwest born family who knows how to jump these puppies; we end up playing follow the leader through the desert. It was more fun letting Rylie (age 5) and Ellie (age 7) drive while we sat back and gave them limited direction (like slow down) we would occasionally fall behind so we could ramp it up to catch back up; the girls loved it. The spider car wasn’t any different (but I couldn’t let the girls drive or I would have) and our horse ride consisted of a 30 yard walk up and back on a poor broken down horse that was the perfect size for Rylie….it didn’t look very good for the adults that actually got on it (we had the only kids and opted out of this ride). There was a little excitement at the end when the horses got into a small skirmish; of course Ellie was front and center for the event, we were able to rescue her without incident. After that though, the tour group took a real interest in the girls and they were always watching (and intervening) to make sure the girls were safe, the Russian/Ukrainian people are very protective of children and it was comforting to know that 25 other people had their safety at heart.

We also got to ride individual camels, you would have thought the girls died and went to heaven having their OWN camel! They sure did look cute up on that funny looking animal! The Bedouin tribe was a bit disappointing as it was “commercialized” I guess Nichole and I had envisioned the National Geographic version. But we got to see a few cobras and other desert reptilian we even had the opportunity to have a snake around our neck…..oh joy! (that’s being sarcastic!) I think I forgot to talk about the ride out there. That was probably the most exciting part of the trip. How does high speed off road travel in an enclosed van/jeep vehicle with no seatbelts sound? So, it was off to the races and with every bump we became somewhat weightless and begin floating around the vehicle (or tumbling). I think that’s why little Rylie started to not feel very well, it was the astronaut training. So we ended up with a car sick little girl and four bruised kidneys (not really…well Rylie didn’t feel well).

They were delighted to be on their own camel!

Tony's camel guide-so cute!

The ride did take us to the amazing part of the trip and that was getting into the mountains and seeing up close the valleys and peaks that we could see from the resort. It doesn’t look like anything you would see in Pacific Northwest; it was a different beauty but still incredible. To think the Israelites wandered a similar wilderness for 40 years is unfathomable, you truly would need Jehovah Jireh!
The night ended with some шашлик (Shashleek….Russian for meat Kabob) and the best nightly entertainment of the entire vacation; a performance of the El Tanoura (Egyptian Spinning Dance)….it was amazing, to have seen it in person was a real privilege!

I think he spun for 20 minutes straight!