Much to our surprise, the internet guys came out on a holiday (Constitution Day) to set up our new connection! Yeah, we are back online!
We’ve been back in Ukraine nearly a week and still not sleeping normally. Man, ten hours is a bitch of a time difference. Tonight I quit fighting with it though; I’m going to plow through until 10 pm (I hope!) and take a sleeping pill to get me through the night. I can’t function like this anymore.
The week has been good. We went to Korosten for Igor’s nephew’s high school graduation. It was the usual Ukrainian semi-organized chaos that is typically of nearly all events here – I’m sure they rehearsed but it still nonetheless looked like they’d pulled it together only a couple hours earlier. That kind of stuff used to drive me nuts (having planned many an event in my day), but now I just find it entertaining and I get a good chuckle. It was hot as hades in the auditorium, though, so Igor, his mom and I ducked out after Denis received his diploma. We hussled home and worked on getting things ready for the family party. Denis went out with his classmates, while his parents, grandparents, Igor and I celebrated at home together.
Somehow all my clothes shrunk while I was in the US- and not just the clothes that I took there with me but all my clothes here in Kyiv too. 🙂 Since I can’t afford a whole new wardrobe right now, the only thing to do is lose some of this American fat that I brought back with me. As long as we keep the trips to Korosten (where’s my mother-in-law’s fantastic cooking is always oh-so-tempting), we should do OK since the beautiful and delicious Ukrainian fruits and veggies are coming into season. We’ve been devouring the gorgeous tomatoes and cucumbers – gazpacho soup, yum! Blueberries and cherries are available now; I bought peaches yesterday. Soon the melons will be ready…. Hmmm, I think we might need to take a road trip to Crimea to really get a full dose of all the fabulous fresh fruits!
Speaking of road trips, we picked up our “new” car this weekend, a 1992 Toyota 4-Runner. The registration is still not completed, so we can’t drive it yet, but hopefully we can finish it up in the next week or two. It’s the most enormous car I’ve ever owned (although still relatively modest in size compared to the gi-normous monsters on the streets of Kyiv). It will be good for us, though – tall and rugged, able to tackle the roads and so-called roads in the places we like to travel to. I just need a step ladder to get up into the thing! Looking forward to some more road-tripping this summer!
And summer is in full force here. We sat on our balcony last week trying to boost up the rather feeble tans we got in cloudy and cold California – no one will believe us we spent over three weeks in the southwest! It’s hot and humid here in Kyiv, though. Now if only we had a beach or swimming pool next to the hotel, I mean apartment.
Anka in Kyiv 