Best birthday ever!

We had a fabulous, albeit much too short, week on the Black Sea in Batumi, Georgia. 

Best birthday ever! We started with a hike to the Gornio Fortress, with a stop for a quick dip in the sea. The sea on one side, the mountains on the other, the hike was certainly scenic! And hot, really hot.

We spent a good 2-3 hours climbing all over everything we could in the fortress, with two extremely pleasant breaks to cool off in the seriously cranked air-conditioning of the small one-room museum. There's a really beautiful tree- and vine-lined walkway right down the center of the fortress, which also provides a little relief from the blazing sun.

With a canopy of kiwis!

The fortress was established in the first century CE, and some of the ancient water pipes are still in tact.

The walls are in incredibly good condition. Even I could easily recognize the different stages of construction in the variations of the material used in the various layers of the walls.

Lots more fortress photos on Flickr.

After a hike back to our hotel, we quickly headed to the beach to cool off.

After a nice swim, it was time for a nice dinner. We knew which restaurant was for us as soon as we saw the two Ziggy portraits in a very fun place right on the shore!

The decor was really eclectic and crazy.

Lots of tasty Georgian treats made for a fabulous birthday dinner! All in all, a great way to spend a birthday!

Vacation! In Georgia! On the sea!

We’re in Batumi, Georgia, on the southeast side of the Black Sea.

We flew in on Saturday, and stayed a couple days in a small town called Kvariati, close to the Turkish border. It was interesting to see as many as four languages on shop and cafe signs! Georgian, Turkish, Russian and English all make appearances.

We chose the hotel in Kvariati primarily due to its proximity to the Gonio fortress, which we were super excited to visit. Note to self: do not pick a hotel primarily due to its proximity to a place you want to see. While we now know what it’s like to take a shower while seated on a toilet, it was an experience we both could have lived without, among other oddities at this strange hotel with very strange people.

But, it was not a total loss of an obscene amount of money, as the the fortress was super awesome (and a total bargain!). Photos are slowly uploading to Flicker, I’ll write more about the fortress when I have some nice visual aids.

We moved to Batumi yesterday, staying in a nice apartment that a family rents out in the summer to tourists. I was in Batumi two years ago and was impressed then. The 2009 edition of Lonely Planet‘s guide to Georgia mentions the plans “to make Batumi an attractive place to visit.” Success! There’s still a LOT of construction and renovation going on throughout the town, but the waterfront is superbly designed, with a looooonnnggg boardwalk, bikepath, sports spots, and a smattering of cafes. No hotels or other big buildings right on the beachfront, which probably drives the major chains insane, but it’s nice to see a beach that isn’t all crapped up with too much development.

We spent the afternoon on the beach, had a nice dinner nearby during an evening rain shower, and relaxed on the balcony with delicious Georgian wine in the evening. Today, no plans at all, just total R&R. We’ll explore some of Batumi later this week and let you know what we find.

Off to the beach!

 

Update: Flickr is being very uncooperative this morning. Two partial sets are uploaded, a few of the Gornio fortress photos and some other weekend photos. I’ll try to upload some more tonight.

Changing Education Paradigms

How to make soap

My host family in Moldova is featured in a really cool video about how to make all-natural soap. The video is in Russian, but watch it even if you can’t understand what they are saying – and try to guess what they make the soap from!

http://pan.md/video/Lechebnoe-milo-iz-Tvarditsi

MoldovAnn on the move – old links not working

We are migrating my old blog, MoldovAnn, to a new hosting service (from WordPress to Posterous). It’s a bit clunkier than we expected and taking a little longer to work out the bugs than we had hoped. Links to the posts on that domain may not work for a few days. Thanks for your patience, I’ll update you when the old blog is back in full service.

A week in our life in Kyiv…

My brother sent me his old iPhone and some “accouterments” to outfit it, including a solar-powered battery charger. The phone battery was low over the weekend and need to recharge, but we wanted to go out for a walk and it feels “naked” to go phoneless these days. So Igor fussed around a bit and figured a way to attach the solar battery charger to my purse strap, attached the phone and tucked it inside my purse, and off we went!  When we got home, the phone was all charged up! I can only imagine what people thought as I walked around town with some weird electronic thingy hanging off my purse. 🙂

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We’ve been on a low-fat. low-cal diet for about a week now. Well, actually, Igor’s been on it longer, plus he’s much better about exercising than I am. But I’ve been fully on the bandwagon this past week, counting calories and trying to get at least a little exercise in every day. I’ve been “saving up” my alloted calories for a few days and tonight we treated ourselves to a little, well, treat – a chunk of blue cheese and some chardonnay. Man, I loves my fresh summer fruits and veggies, but wow, the taste of the fatty rich creamy tangy cheese was just amazing after nothing but fruits and veggies for a week! I always wanted to become a vegan, but have never been able to cut dairy out of my life completely, namely, cheese, yogurt and ice cream. Oh well, the little things that make us happy!

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Preparations for Euro 2012 are in high-speed in Kyiv. My office is within spitting distance of the stadium in central Kyiv (which, is my opinion, just about the stupidest of places to put a sports stadium in a densely packed, ancient city with narrow streets, insufficient parking and poor infrastructure all-around), so we watch the construction progress on a daily basis. Not long ago, a crew completely tore up one of the main boulevards, Lesi Ukrainki, street and sidewalks. While we’re always happy to see improvements in our neighborhood, we were a bit surprised that this street and sidewalks were at the top of the list to redo; they certainly weren’t in the worst shape compared to many other streets and sidewalks around Kyiv. And then it hit me. When the UEFA leadership team comes to Kyiv to check on progress for Euro 2012, they’ll go straight from Boryspil airport into Kyiv, along Lesi Ukrainki to Esplanadna Street to the stadium. The city (national?) government is making the route as attractive as possible, or at least making it look like their making the route as attractive as possible. In the meantime, giant holes appear in streets in other parts of the city. Reminds me of my Catholic school days – if everything looks OK, then everything must be OK.

I can has borscht

Igor has a hankering for borscht, and made enough for the whole neighborhood. Yum!

Hip Babuska

It’s so nice to hear a positive story, for a change, from the depths of Russia!

Check out these hip, gorgeous babushki!

NPR: Russian Women Prove It’s Hip To Be A Babushka

The Washington Quarterly: Crimea’s Overlooked Instability

An interesting article on Crimea, written by my friend Bill Varettoni, a former Peace Corps Volunteer and then Fulbright scholar in Ukraine.

http://twq.com/11summer/index.cfm?id=445

Crimea’s Overlooked Instability

William Varettoni

Crimea is far more complex, and at risk of civil conflict, than most recognize, and Russia is not the problem. Ethnic tensions, a widening Islamic-Orthodox Christian fissure, disinformation campaigns, and cycles of elite-manipulated instability all threaten a downward spiral of civil violence.

Home Sweet Home

I got back today from 2 weeks in Washington, DC. My apologies to everyone I did not call and could not meet up with. It was an insanely busy business trip, with meetings and conference calls practically up to the minute I boarded the plane out of there. The only upside of such a busy trip in the US is that I had only a few hours on one Sunday afternoon for shopping – so, well, that’s good and bad. Didn’t spend nearly as much as I do when I’m in the U.S., but also came back with almost no gifts for family and friends here. I did manage to get to the Apple store after a last-minute approval to get a new laptop for work, and I went all-out on the Macbook Air. I’ll be trying to re-adapt back to a Mac after 5 years of MIcrosoft computers, but so far it’s coming back pretty easily.

My dad and two friends from Ohio came to DC to spend the weekend with me, but I really only had one day, Saturday, truly free. Dad’s only request was to visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (which I had to look up just now to make sure I got the name right, I keep wanting to call it the Native American Museum). We were there during “Choctaw Days”, and had the good luck to see some special presentations, like dances, artisans, etc.

I was completely enthralled by the beadwork. If I ever get the time and energy, I’d love to convert some of the designs to cross-stitch.

During our quick morning calls, Igor would ask me what’s up in the US. Honestly, I filled my iPod with news podcasts and got somewhat caught up during the flights back to Kyiv! Didn’t even get to watch Daily Show except for one night. *Sigh*

Very, very glad to be back home with my boys. Igor’s got some awesome new t-shirts he’s already sporting, and I’ll post pictures eventually. We don’t have any particular plans for the holiday weekend (US Independence Day), but just being home and relaxing with Igor is about the best treat I can think of!

When I’m a bit more settled in and less tired, I will try to write up what happened with Delta and why I never want to travel with them again, and why nobody else should either. Absolutely unconscionable what they did to loyal customers – in a nutshell, cancelled all their operations out of Kyiv, never notified passengers, rebooked people onto other flights without notifying the other airlines, closed their office at the Kyiv Borispol airport, and basically left people completely screwed. I was horrified by what I witnessed, and it was only dumb luck that I didn’t end up in the same completely screwed situation as hundreds of other people. Delta, YOU SUCK!

On that happy note, I’m going to bed.