More Kiev Experience
It's Sunday noon and we were kicked out of our apartment. It wasn't booked for an extra night so we had two choices. Have a real estate lady who does not speak any english take our key, find us a cab and send us on our way to our new appartment, only 5 minutes away, (could be 5 minutes by foot, car or plane, you never know here), or leave all our bags with our friends who are a 30 second walk. We agonized over the decision and chose the latter. So it was off to our favorite mall to have cake and espresso. So much for losing weight. I think I probably gained. There goes my record half marathon time in June, oh well.
We are at a new Internet Cafe. It has high speed connections and is light years better than the first one we found. The prices here are very cheap, $1.20 / hour. The rates go up by a factor of 4 after 11 pm. All the kids are packed in here and are all gaming thru the network. We walked into a similar place last night and the temperature was 30 degrees hotter with everyone playing. It was pretty cool, everyone yelling and stuff.
Last night was some kind of special night in Kiev, we think. They closed off the major streets surrounding Independence Square and opened it up to foot traffic only. There were literally 10's of thousands of people. It was a mad house. They had this extremely strange "parade" that we saw where this one "float" had a guy peddling near the back and this girl was hooked up to this bird like contraption that was positioned about 5 feet above him in the air. It reminded me of those old flying contraptions that people tried to invent around the Wright brothers era. She was lying horizontal in this type of harness and she had her arms inside these bird like wings and she was flapping them around to some strange techno music. Still haven't figured what that was all about. And in front of this float was some guy in this weird go-cart with a 10 foot hand made satellite dish in the back. I know what you are thinking. I must have consumed a very bad bowl of Borscht soup. I thought I may have also but this is not the case. I was perfectly sane at the time. This was around 10 pm at night. Before that when it was still light out there were all manner of vendors, selling their wares. There was this one lady who had a box with a cat and dog who were dressed up to look like brother and sister, or something. Judy just had to have pictures of this. It was the first cat we saw since being here. Not sure if cats are pets or delicacies, just kidding. We just don't see them around anywhere.
There were people with huge camels, which you could take your picture with. Monkeys wearing little bell hop uniforms. Owls, hawks, etc. Our friend Tony got kidnapped into having his picture taken with them (for a price of course, but very cheap, all in fun). The monkey leaped on top of his head and then settled in his arms for the picture. It was hilarious watching this thing. If you ever saw the early Friends episodes with Ross' monkey Marcel you know what he would look like. All manner of people were walking thru the streets all doing their thing, minding their own business. People had impromptu bands that would just be in the middle of the street doing their thing. Some stages were out with people giving speeches. One guy was speaking in French. Don't know what that was about. Maybe soccer related. We had a complete feeling of security walking around, which felt strange. You would think that you would have to be on guard over here but truthfully I would feel more uneasy doing this same thing back home. Over here its live and let live.
Today were will be meeting with our guy to meet our translator who will be travelling with us to Nicopol. This is a very historic city that was in the middle of many key battles with the Turks back in the day. There are many huge grave yards surrounding this city. The city is a huge mining and shipping area. It is positioned on a huge lake that leads to the Black Sea. Here is a link to pictures of the city http://www.greatestcities.com/users/monda/
We will be travelling by train at 11 pm tonight, and arriving in the morning and then off to the orphanage to see our potential "children". Still trying to wrap my brain around two instead of one.
Time to let Judy have the blog.
Hello to everyone. Dena, Jeff, John, Kyo (sp), Mahnaz, Julie, Colleen, Dave, Dave, Linda, Donna, Mish, Steve, and everyone else, hope I didn't forget anyone.
Cliff.
We are at a new Internet Cafe. It has high speed connections and is light years better than the first one we found. The prices here are very cheap, $1.20 / hour. The rates go up by a factor of 4 after 11 pm. All the kids are packed in here and are all gaming thru the network. We walked into a similar place last night and the temperature was 30 degrees hotter with everyone playing. It was pretty cool, everyone yelling and stuff.
Last night was some kind of special night in Kiev, we think. They closed off the major streets surrounding Independence Square and opened it up to foot traffic only. There were literally 10's of thousands of people. It was a mad house. They had this extremely strange "parade" that we saw where this one "float" had a guy peddling near the back and this girl was hooked up to this bird like contraption that was positioned about 5 feet above him in the air. It reminded me of those old flying contraptions that people tried to invent around the Wright brothers era. She was lying horizontal in this type of harness and she had her arms inside these bird like wings and she was flapping them around to some strange techno music. Still haven't figured what that was all about. And in front of this float was some guy in this weird go-cart with a 10 foot hand made satellite dish in the back. I know what you are thinking. I must have consumed a very bad bowl of Borscht soup. I thought I may have also but this is not the case. I was perfectly sane at the time. This was around 10 pm at night. Before that when it was still light out there were all manner of vendors, selling their wares. There was this one lady who had a box with a cat and dog who were dressed up to look like brother and sister, or something. Judy just had to have pictures of this. It was the first cat we saw since being here. Not sure if cats are pets or delicacies, just kidding. We just don't see them around anywhere.
There were people with huge camels, which you could take your picture with. Monkeys wearing little bell hop uniforms. Owls, hawks, etc. Our friend Tony got kidnapped into having his picture taken with them (for a price of course, but very cheap, all in fun). The monkey leaped on top of his head and then settled in his arms for the picture. It was hilarious watching this thing. If you ever saw the early Friends episodes with Ross' monkey Marcel you know what he would look like. All manner of people were walking thru the streets all doing their thing, minding their own business. People had impromptu bands that would just be in the middle of the street doing their thing. Some stages were out with people giving speeches. One guy was speaking in French. Don't know what that was about. Maybe soccer related. We had a complete feeling of security walking around, which felt strange. You would think that you would have to be on guard over here but truthfully I would feel more uneasy doing this same thing back home. Over here its live and let live.
Today were will be meeting with our guy to meet our translator who will be travelling with us to Nicopol. This is a very historic city that was in the middle of many key battles with the Turks back in the day. There are many huge grave yards surrounding this city. The city is a huge mining and shipping area. It is positioned on a huge lake that leads to the Black Sea. Here is a link to pictures of the city http://www.greatestcities.com/users/monda/
We will be travelling by train at 11 pm tonight, and arriving in the morning and then off to the orphanage to see our potential "children". Still trying to wrap my brain around two instead of one.
Time to let Judy have the blog.
Hello to everyone. Dena, Jeff, John, Kyo (sp), Mahnaz, Julie, Colleen, Dave, Dave, Linda, Donna, Mish, Steve, and everyone else, hope I didn't forget anyone.
Cliff.
posted by Judy @ 3:42 AM
1 Comments:
At 9:58 AM,
Silver Paladin said…
Wow, what a life experience! I really hope that all works out for you two.
I Can't wait to see how Judy deals with 2 children, 24x7.. Day 1: no honey, don't touch that.. Day 2: Remember honey, we can't be touching things that we are not permitted to touch... Day 3: PUT THAT DOWN!!!! lol.
Your going to have a language barrier too. That should be fun. Hopefully the children have been exposed to some english already. At least you won't have to deal with dirty diapers, staying up with a colicy baby, crying all night. This will be the hardest, and most rewarding job you take on in your life!
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