Now That's a Thunderstorm!

As I have said before, the weather around here is a bit crazy. Last night as we went to bed the room lit up almost constantly with lightening. After an hour of trying to ignore the bright flashing light with the thunder in the distance, I finally fell asleep. As I woke this morning the lightening was less, but the thunder was more. All morning we listened to the thunder just casually talking to us, hardly taking a breath it seems. Finally the storm really came around 1:30 in the afternoon; we could hear the thunder increase and as it grew louder and louder the rain began to come down harder and harder! It sounds like there’s a bowling party on our tin roof! Of course the rain hitting the tin roof makes it even louder. Ellie was visiting a friend so Rylie went out by herself and enjoyed playing in the rain!  This evening while getting something out of the refrigerator a thunder clapped so loud that I actually ducked, my heart possibly skipped a beat too!  Tony was upstairs and he said the lightening flashed and the thunder came not even a second after it.  Wow, it was LOUD!

I tried to attach video footage, but it might be too large.  We'll figure it out and get it attached soon.

The Fun Never Stops

Everywhere we go they just keep feeding and feeding us! Sometimes Tony and I feel like Hansel and Gretel; what do they really have planned for us (tee hee). We went to a birthday party with so much pizza we all had to take a box home. The girls got lipgloss, nailpolish, hoola hoops and went on a scavenger hunt. They also served two huge cakes. It was quite the event. The next evening we went to a fair well party at Dima’s Dasha and the food was outstanding as usual. One of the American families played and sang for the party and it was awesome entertainment! We keep getting great food and great entertainment and it’s not costing us a dime, not even a Kopec (Ukranian change)! The kids tried caviar, and one little girl thought it tasted like green olives, only sweeter. I was so full from the first 3 courses that I did not have room for any Shoshleek, which is a shame because it is so tasty.

The next day was full of food and great company again! Our neighbors had us over for a BBQ lunch and it was also delicious. We toasted many times to friendship, beautiful and expensive women, and great neighbors! I did have a sip, mind you no more than a quarter teaspoon, of Cognac and I’m sure that there were flames coming out my ears! I can see why some think Listerine tastes good, compared to that stuff I would have to agree! We lounged in a Hammock and visited for many hours. We ended our Saturday at a local restaurant with friends where the girls danced for two hours straight, pausing only to inhale their food and take a drink on occasion. As we strolled home that night we listened to locals visit in the square and play music and watched fireworks get shot in the air for the announcement of another wedding (a few fireworks are let off in the evening for a wedding and in the summer there are many weddings)! We passed some local wildlife; stray dogs and one chubby little hedgehog.

The Joy of Cooking

As I mentioned before, cooking is a bit challenging at the moment. We finally found cream cheese the other day but it only comes in containers that are about 3-4 ounces. The heavy cream also comes in a very small container, but I successfully made scones with local blueberries for my first tea party. It’s so hot we only drank Iced tea though. My oven is screamin’ hot though, my neighbor gave me an American standard gage and no matter what I set the oven on it climbs to over 500 degrees F. That’s just not going to work for me, the “Martha Stewart” that I am, tee hee.

I wish I could buy and store more fruit from Reenach, but it’s all I can do to buy enough to carry and eat in just a couple of days. The girls and I eat the fruit and vegetables like they are going out of style, which they sort of are. The little grocery stores carry some produce, but there won’t be the variety once farm season is over. My freezer is almost entirely full of blueberries and I will shove as much apple butter as I can in it once I start making that. I’m sure going to miss my strawberry jam this year, strawberry season was over by the time I arrived in Slavutich, bummer!

My neighbor and I have already begun cooking and sharing with each other. I brought her some scones, cobbler from fruit from her trees and homemade applesauce. Of course, the girls (dievooshkee) have helped me with nearly all the cooking! They are so eager to help, and it’s been so fun to do all this with them. The girls and I are having a great time being Suzy homemakers together. Anna (our neighbor), invited me over to see that she was making palmenya. Palmenya is a small round piece of pastry with a pork, onion, beef mixture set inside, then the dough is folded over, sealed and the ends pinched together. You cook these in a pan maybe with onion and butter/oil or a cream sauce, or bacon and

Girls' Palmenya on left, Anna's on the right.

 mushrooms….oh soooo good! When the girls knocked on Anna’s door and saw she was cooking they were eager to help. I went over later and found my girls working away in Anna’s kitchen doing a fine job! Anna was pleased and told her mother in Russia and her sister and daughters in Kiev what a good job the dievooshkee were doing! I told Anna that these we’ll be our best souvenirs, the time that we get to spend learning how to cook new foods and learning other traditions from new friends!

Anna shared borscht with me and it was also quite tasty. Unfortunately, they do not have many recipes written down so it is going to take watching and practice for me to get their recipes right! Even Anna says that some meals are a little different each time you cook it. I can handle that idea with dinners, but with my baked goods I will need recipes.

Fun at the River

We went to the local Yacht club to enjoy some time at the river with friends. Their yacht club is not quite like ours, but we had a wonderful time. We packed fruit, drinks and sandwiches and took a taxi to the little beach by the river. It was more of an inlet on the river so it was quite calm and very warm. The water was probably about 78-82 degrees F. The water was pretty brown and the snails were very very stinky at times. Nonetheless, the kids splashed, caught frogs and we all got a little wet and a little more tan. Nastya’s boyfriend saw Tony and was quite excited to visit with him. He knows as much English as we know Russian so the conversation was very limited but still very lively. Tony was welcomed with great open arms from Andre many times and in the end all we knew for sure is that according to Andre, Tony is a SUPER GUY/SUPER TONY! You just had to be there, I don’t think Tony (I mean Super Tony) had been hugged so many times in 20 minutes in his whole life! Once we got home we instantly showered (with extra scrubbing) and washed clothes to be sure to get rid of the essence of brown dirty river and snail! Later that night we walked to the bakery and bought pizza and had a pepsi cola light (diet pepsi) for dinner. It was a fun day!

A day in the life in Slavutich

Now to share what we do from day to day. Although we walk often, it’s not just a walk in the park. Slavutich is a town that was built in the late 1980’s and was considered a very modern town. At the time they planned for phone and cable for every household, I’m glad they did because I can share all my experiences with you. The streets and sidewalks are a bit of an obstacle course at times, with a sudden down pour a new pothole can appear at anytime. This year is an extra hot summer according to locals, so I am very thankful for the two rooms in our cottage that have air conditioning. Our American friends have come over a few times to escape the heat and humidity. The girls and I have not managed to do our shopping early enough yet, we go to the store or market about every other day and we melt the entire time. I need to plan our meals for the week and shop better on Saturday at Reenach, but meals our proving to be a small challenge of their own.
I have tried to make some of our own meals from the states, but finding all the ingredients is next to impossible. I usually get about ¾ of the ingredients so we have something close to the same. Cream cheese is tough to find, their “cheddar” cheese is mild and except for chicken I don’t know what to do with the rest of their meat (many versions of pork). Even spaghetti (American style) is proving hard to make. I am sure I will learn how to cook some of the local food, but that will take time in the kitchen with my neighbor ( I don’t believe they write a lot of recipes down). We have had many wonderful meals already, and our new local friends have shared homemade syrups and jams with us that are delicious!! I wish I had a bigger freezer to hold all the fruit for the winter. Going to the market for me is like walking through the candy store, but you can only buy as much as you can carry and as much as you can eat in a couple days (or prepare to store for the winter).
We had tea with the other American mom’s and kids last week. We had apple crisp (I donated brown sugar and the recipe) and I enjoyed visiting with new friends and Sister Anne and Sister Mary Teres. I will be hosting tea at my house this week. Hopefully I can bake something yummy, but that would mean that I can find all the ingredients as well as figure out my oven. It’s a nice new oven, but it’s convection I think, it has about 6 different picture options (which I only understand one, the OFF dot) and boy does it cook hot! Baking is my thing so I have got to figure it out!
Laundry has been going pretty well. My washer is also fairly new and holds one medium laundry basket worth of clothes. I learned quickly that as soon as we had a hot day with no humidity that is the morning you wash your sheets to hang outside and dry. On a humid day you just don’t bother with laundry, it’ll never dry. The girls have splashed in the local fountain (it’s washed daily) with other local kids and they run through the sprinkler in our “garden” (back yard). Our local friends are worried that the water is too cold for the children and they may fall ill. I let them know that it is an American passed time (running through the sprinkler) and our kids are just fine, still healthy!
The girls were so exhausted one evening on our first week that they fell asleep at the restaurant right as their dinner arrived. Between recovering from jet lag, the hot humid weather and all the excitement they literally crashed that night. It was pretty cute, if we hadn’t helped them their faces would have fallen straight into their plate of food!
We enjoy the local bakery, local restaurants, all the fresh food, trying out our Russian, and visiting with our neighbors. Oh yes, our neighbors, they are absolutely delightful. Anna (pronounced Ah like the short “o” sound) and Victor. Their daughters Tania and Sasha are grown and live in Kiev so Anna and Victor are excited to have two little girls living next door. They speak English which helps out a lot! Anna shares her clothes pins with me and loves having the children play in their daughters’ room. She wants the girls to practice their lessons on her piano anytime and I look forward to practicing my Russian with Anna. Ellie and Rylie were excited to help Victor pick cherries and apples from their trees. We then made a cherry apricot cobbler to share with them. We met Tania this last week and had more laughs and more visiting with our neighbors. Tania is a piano teacher and an interpreter. She studied opera in school, and when she played and sang for us we had goose bumps it was so beautiful (what a treat that she would perform for us)! We look forward to going to Kiev to visit Tania, meet her sister and have them show us around town!
We are quite busy with our daily activities, from trying to set up house (still waiting on the shipment), getting food in the house, cooking meals and staying on top of laundry; to attending birthday parties, visiting the local museum, learning the different shops, seeing the bigger cities, and attending more parties. We even had a potluck at our house the other day, the food and company were great! We haven’t quite been here two weeks, but it feels quite comfortable like we have already been here a month. I really hope to learn the language better and of course I need to learn how to ask them to slow down when they speak! It’s pretty funny that even the dogs know Russian better than me (tee hee).
I have many local people who are willing to help us out. Alex, our Russian instructor, Anna and Victor our neighbors (they even have a car), and Nastya, our landlord’s daughter. Without Nastya I may have never found a broom, we looked at 5 different stores and market vendors before we found one! Our neighborhood is very quiet and very pretty. Our neighborhood is all built of red brick from Estonia and all the plants are just beautiful. It is very pleasant here. We have been blessed every step of the way and I am trying to enjoy every moment for I know this time will be gone in a flash.

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.