An entire day at home – ah, it was great. The rain kept Igor and me inside most of Saturday (that and his sprained ankle – so much for our jogging endeavors!). Dad was more adventurous, and braved the icky weather to spend a few hours in the city center. We weren’t entirely lazy, but after a few hours of very serious housecleaning (where does the grime come from?), we spent the rest of the day as couch kartoshki (potatoes), watching movies, drinking wine. Perfect.
The Patriarch of all the Orthodox churches, from Istanbul, is in Kyiv this weekend to celebrate the 1020th anniversary of Christianity in Ukraine/Rus’. It’s sort of a strange anniversary to celebrate, but I suppose it was a good enough reason, and President Yushchenko is not likely to have much of a political career by the 1025th anniversary, so I guess he’s getting in what he can. I was in Russia in 1988, the year of the 1000th anniversary of Christianity in Rus’. The official celebration was held in Moscow at that time, not in Kyiv (which was the seat of power at the time of and the actual location of the baptism of Rus’). We watched a bit of the ceremony on TV, looked like a decent crowd showed up despite the rain. The President’s speech was long, doubly long with the English translation.
Dad found the Aviation Museum on Friday. Kudos to him! I didn’t even know there was an aviation museum in Kyiv. And it’s not close to anything in particular, so it was an adventure in itself for him to find the place. He said it was not bad, even had descriptions of the displays in English. We’ll have to check it out sometime.
The one trip I did make out of the apartment yesterday was to get some passport photos – time to get a new passport! I hate showing people my current passport – it’s ancient, and the photo doesn’t even look like me at all. It’s like a completely different person, and I look 10 years older than I am now, instead of 10 years younger. I can see the sadness in my face, the depression and the low self-esteem. I was more than four years into an unhappy marriage, with 2 more to go. Boy, did it ever take me a long time to learn those lessons!
Well, I’m pretty happy with the photo this time around, and I’m definitely happy with my life now. Ready to start with some clean passport pages, looking forward to lots of new adventures.
Anka in Kyiv 