1st Big Weekend

We certainly hit the ground running. We have only been in town for 4 days and we had a birthday party on Saturday and a tour of Chernigov on Sunday.
Many of our work group gatherings take place at Dima’s Dosha which is a local gentlemen’s property that he has fixed up into an awesome place to entertain. He continues to add cultural artifacts as well as fun things for children to do. We went to celebrate one of the new families youngest boys birthday (he was turning one) and it gave many of the newcomers a chance to meet some of our fellow Americans. Everyone was so friendly and we all managed to visit and laugh and eat till time got away from us.
The kids had a blast catching little green crickets and meeting some local children from another party nearby. There was one small incident; the windmill (small and made for children to enjoy) and when I went to check on the kids Ellie informed me, “they won’t let us play in the windmill”, her arms crossed and huffy. Rylie continued with, “yeah, and they know Russian and we don’t!” I managed to help them resolve the problem. Pretty cute though. The food is fantastic and endless. We had appetizers, then a delicious meal, which was followed by a 3rd course of 3 meats that were seasoned/marinated and grilled or roasted. Over the 3 hours of eating we finished it off with a beautiful cake from the local grocery store and one of the American families made apple crisp (which is a special treat because they have no brown sugar in Ukraine).
On Sunday we took the train to chernigov (see I told you the train was coming). We were a little behind schedule so we nearly ran to the station and as we stood in the little shade pouring with sweat (truly dripping off us) we learned that the train was behind schedule. In fact, it was 25 minutes late which was just enough time for the sweat to begin to stick to us instead of drip off of us. Keep in mind, it’s usually too humid for any salt to crystallize on your body, it’s just sticky sticky sticky! As the train arrived we all gathered close to the doors nearly shoving our way on to the train, tripping over bikes and feet trying to get a seat. This seems to be about the only thing Ukrainian’s do in a hurry; get on and off public transportation. It’s almost a panic, mainly to be sure you get a seat, or as we saw, to be sure you don’t get closed in a bus door and have it start moving. We saw a guy get closed in the doors on a bus, he had to yell and others did too to get the driver to stop and he just got out, he was NOT happy (I don’t blame him)! Crazy.
As Alex (Tony’s Russian instructor and the principal of Perspective – a school in Slavutich that teaches in English, Russian and one other language) showed Tony and myself the historical sites of Chernigov the girls played with Vlada his 12 year old daughter (she speaks English) and his wife Galena cooked them a yummy lunch. The girls had a lot of fun; Vlada had many activities for them. Alex and his family are so very kind and he is so eager to teach us everything about Ukraine! First we visited the Reenach (open market/bazaar) and it was like nothing I have ever seen before. You can truly buy everything there, from farm fresh eggs to cell phone cards. You try on clothes in front of everyone or just behind a small privacy current for pants and dresses. Even when it is only 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside! I tasted some delicious honey and then we went in to the meat market, not a pleasant smell and I politely tried a small bite of the pork fat (very traditional Ukrainian food, they serve a slice on bread with salt and pepper and a bite of fresh garlic). Let’s just say that I do not like the pork fat – big surprise! Tony never even tried that at the market, no fair that I was the guinea pig! Thankfully Alex bought me some fresh hot donuts for being a good sport!
We then visited many historical places in Chernigov, St. Catherine’s church, the monastery, and the catacombs. One place I do not ever intend on visiting is the underground public restrooms. I can handle that they have the Asian style toilet (just a hole in the ground), but I can’t even get in them to see because of the horrid smell! Even Alex says the smell is bad enough to kill you sometimes, and even that is an understatement I think. Some places we visited were 900 years old. The catacombs were very interesting, the tunnels apparently go all the way to Kiev (which is 150 miles away), nobody knows for sure though. People hid in them from the enemies and monks lived in little cells in them as they passed through. Locals brought them food to their “cell” and if they did not touch the food they assumed they were dead. At that point they closed up the cell with the monk in it. Not a good place to go on a fast! This was also the only cool place in Chernigov that day since it is underground it is naturally cool and comfortable in the summer and warm in the winter compared to the frigid winter temperatures in Ukraine. As Tony put it earlier, our “dogs were barkin’” at the end of our personal tour!
We finished at Alex’s home with a delicious traditional Ukrainian meal; borscht, chicken with mushroom sauce, a tasty roasted chicken, and yummy tomato and cucumber salad fresh from the market. I think potatoes too; it was more food than we could possibly eat. Then of course there were 3 desserts! We had torte, bleencheekee (thin pancakes like crepes) and ice-cream with homemade apricot sauce. We topped this off with some hot tea and visited over photo albums of our family and his. How neat that our countries pasts could have made us natural enemies, but instead we are friends enjoying delicious food together and learning about each other’s culture!

So The Walking Begins

I would say that it is Rylie having the hardest time adjusting to all the walking we have to do. To her credit her legs aren't even half as long as mine! I have been going slow for her, but that means a 20 minute walk in the hot very humid weather to get to Soyuse instead of just a 10 minute walk. Some days are not so bad, but if we have a rain storm and then the sun comes out, uuugh! You start sweating before you even think about walking. We do have air conditioning in two of our rooms, but you can't sit in those rooms all day. They certainly help us recover though. Tony has learned to walk quite fast which is funny because he used to be the pokiest in the family. He showed us around town on Saturday (day 4). We went to the far grocery store (Silpoe) which is also where the Reenock is (the open market, farmer's market, bazaar). This is across town and should only take about 20 minutes, but the humidity and two tired little girls made it a longer walk.

The market (Reenock) is quite interesting, you can buy anything there and it's cheaper than the stores. Of course their is wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables; we got apricots to snack on, cherries, blueberries and gorgeous tomatoes! I also purchased a little gift for a party we were attending that night (birthday for a one year old) and a couple practical items just for practice. You can buy dishes, pots and pans, underwear, batteries, bedding...and on and on. Fascinating. Tony took us to the little bakery that morning and it was yummy of course. As we walked home we stopped at a park for the girls. There are parks everywhere in Slavutich. Some are pretty small, but they are everywhere!

We have a lot of little things to get for the cottage just to help get us organized and situated, so it feels like we are going to the store every day. Of course even still, we will probably go to the store or Reenock 3 and 4 times a week. Walk, walk, walk. My Baggu bags are absolutely perfect for how we must shop around here. They fit neatly in my purse, and hold a lot of stuff!

Rylie informed me, "mom, later ago when we were walking, a little boy was carrying groceries with his mom and dad.. and.. he.. JUST.. STUCK HIS TONGUE OUT AT ME!" She was quite taken back by that. :)

We Are Here!

Up to this point I had not really had any reservations. I felt the Lord has made everything go more smoothly than anyone could have planned. We stopped at the cottage for a moment and went out for dinner and a small peek at the town. I was feeling pretty exhausted and I think reality was sinking in a little bit. As Tony got the girls ready for bed the first night I took a peek around the house...let's just say that it was not home!... Without complaining too much I went to bed to recover some and get a fresh look in the morning. Things always seem better once you are rested! I began scrubbing and organizing in the kitchen first thing just to get situated a little. Tony was right though, the cottage was very clean and really perfect for us. Except for getting some different smells taken care of I was very happy with the cottage and my anxious and unhappy feelings from the night before soon began to fade.

Of course Tony had work the next day, in fact he had to go to Kiev for meetings over night. Nothing like abandoning your family - Dasvidania! It was fine though, other American friends fed us lunch and brought us to the close grocery store (Soyuse - 10 minute walk or so). The first day I spent unpacking luggage and organizing some while trying to keep the girls and I awake all day. It was tough, with an occasional nap we managed.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Well almost all 3 of those, we'll get to the train the next weekend. The flights went really well; no major delays, no turbulance, no travel sickness, and really no cranky kids! The kids slept some and were quite entertained on the plane with their backpack treasures and a movie. It's strange chasing the day, because I just couldn't quite grasp that we flew right past the night and started day two (what?!). Once we reached Amsterdam the girls fell asleep hard, so after sitting and nodding off in a chair we decided to put coats on the cool floor of the airport in a "quiet" corner with other weary travelors and rest as much as we could with the kids. Getting up from the oh so comfy seats Tony discovered that he had a rear end full of chocolate and caramel candy bar (it did not exactly look like that though). Good thing for the well packed travelors that we were and he was able to go and change into clean clothes! Getting through the airport in Kiev felt a little surreal, we just followed our helper through customs very closely; at times I almost wanted to be tied together with a rope to him. It really went well though, only had one missing piece of luggage (not bad out of 12) but it showed up a day or so later wrapped in plastic because it had a broken handle. Nothing was missing, although we are still waiting on our shipment. The drive from Kiev to Slavutich was nice, the driver actually used the airconditioner and drove at a nice speed while staying on the roads and not using sidewalks! It was very hard to stay awake at that point. We had been traveling for nearly 24 hours with only a few naps, but we needed to stay awake because we would get to the cottage, go have dinner and get home for bed on Slavutich time with the hope that jet lag recovery would go better.

The "See you laters"

Saying goodbye is tough. We have the advantage of experiencing so many different things, but I'm sure we will have our moments just like everyone else. Ellie had a lot of special time with her friend Francesca, cousin Hailey and all her Aunts and Uncles, cousins and Grandparents. Rylie also had a great time with all of her friends and family; everyone made it special and memorable for them! Time just seemed to move very quickly the last week, what we thought would feel like a lot of time to sit around and visit really seemed to fly by at lightening speed! As the 4th of July ended it was hard to go to the hotel, at that point it felt like if we didn't go to bed the next morning would not come. There is no pausing time though. Now I suppose family and friends are trying to speed up time. The airport was not as bad as it could have been. As the mom, I was still in work mode; making sure we had everything and we all got to our destination with all our stuff! It was nice to have so many people there to see us off and thank you everyone for doing your best at having one nice last little visit.

The Finishing Touches

The 2 weeks before we left for Ukraine was pretty crazy. We relaxed at the Oregon Coast for a couple of days spent time with family out of town and in town as much as possible. We managed to see one more movie at the theater before we left town (Toy Story 3) and it was awesome. Crazy to think that going to that show is what some people in Slavutich earn in 2 weeks! We moved out of the house, which took a little more work than I thought even though the company had movers for us. I had many friends come and help clean, so that went fast. Once again we tried to just do the "see you later" hugs rather than the "goodbye" ones. Uuugh! We spent several days at a hotel and the girls got a lot of swimming in. Between swimming and late nights with family we were all getting pretty exhausted. All the goodbying wears a person out!

The Journey Begins

Tony's Adventures

The five weeks Tony spent in Slavutich was quite an adventure. He had stories of his Dr. appointments that ranged from an EKG (which was more like jumper cables attached to him) to misscommunications that made Tony nearly take his pants down and they only wanted him to roll his pant legs up!

Tony toured many historical sites in Chernigov, St. Catherine's Cathedral, the monestary, the catacoms and much more, in total it was easily 12 miles of hiking on a very hot day, nice though with your own personal tour guide. The day ended with a very large traditional Ukrainian meal which included borscht (very good) and pork fat on bread (not so good). Then he took the 50 minute train ride and a 20 minute walk home for a very good nights sleep.

He is learning Russian, shopping around town, meeting wonderful neighbors, and enjoying great food!