4/04/04

Mary Here,
Wow, what a day. Travel for 2 whole days is not fun. Our flight was late getting out of Paris, and that was an adventure in and of itself. We watched, closely, for our gate number to be posted. When it finally was, 45 minutes before boarding, there was a HUGE line to get through security. People going through that line were going to one of two places, either Moscow or Kyiv. The Moscow flight was due to leave in fewer than 10 mintues, yet there were still many, many people in that line waiting to get through security. We were in line for about 45 minutes before finally getting through, then we got to sit and wait. Time for our flight came, the plane left the gate area, and no one was boarded. Seemed they needed to change the planes for "safety reasons". So we waited. Then they announced we could start boarding. They scanned our boarding pass, looked at our passports and sent us down the long hall, only this hall did not lead to a plane. We walked down 3 flights of stairs, out to a waiting bus. That bus drove around the tarmac until the right plane was located, at which time we all got off the bus and onto the plane. By now, we were an hour past our scheduled take off time. And the runways in Paris must be 5 or more miles from the terminal, because I could have sworn we were driving to Kyiv in the plane. Finally, 1 1/2 hours late, we took off.

We both caught a few zzzzz's, but I did also strike up a conversation with another American couple traveling for adoption. They want to get a little girl, between 3 and 6 years old. Their appointment is tomorrow. I wish them good luck in finding their child.

We landed in Kyiv without incident. Flying low over Ukraine coming in, it reminded us of Kansas-lots and lots of farm land. Taxiing in from the runway (A MUCH shorter taxi than in Paris), the airport looked eerily still and quiet. If you have ever seen "The Langoliers" that is what it reminded us of. Very, very eerie. Then we saw a truck driving, and that spell was broken, thank goodness.

We got off the plane via pull up steps, and boarded a bus for the very short trip up to the terminal. The terminal itself was new looking, much, much nicer and cleaner than Paris. We had our immigration forms filled out, so we picked a line and stuck with it. Shouldn't have-we picked the slowest line. We were among the last people getting through immigration from 2 flights arriving at the same time. Then onto Customs. I easily found the English custom forms and started filling them out. We had already decided who was physically taking what through the lines, so it didn't take long. We put our bags on the scanner belt to be xrayed, and quickly picked them up on the other side, then saw the famous "red" and "green" lines. We got in a red line, which moved very quickly. The customs official was a polite, but business like woman who questioned JIm on the "gifts" we listed. We just put "general gifts" totaling about 100.00. He explained exactly what they were: stuff like 2 English language books for the orphanage, coffee and gum for our facilitator, etc... She waved him through. I had the bulk of the cash on me, and 2 cameras. She asked if the cameras were "gifts", but of course they are not. We need those! She asked if all of the money I had claimed was ours. Yep! THen she stamped me and we were ready to walk through the double doors to our (hopefully) waiting facilitator, Maxim. For those yet to travel, that entire experience was really not bad at all. It only took about 20 minutes total, and we did not rush. And everyone is basically doing the same thing, so it is hard to get turned around and do it wrong.

So, through the doors we went, in search of our names on a piece of paper being held by Maxim. We looked, and looked. No "Jim/Mary Stolz" or anything like it. Hmmm, he must be late, although we were almost 2 hours later than I thought we would be. We were pounced on immediately by the private drivers wanting to give us a ride. We practiced our Ukrainian with firm but polite "nee, spaceeba". We quickly figured out the way to not get so many people wanting to give you a ride for "the best price in town", was to walk quickly, look like you know exactly what you are doing and where you are going, and don't just wander. We made our way over to the little restaurant area, changed 40.00 so we had some local currency, and I bought a phone card. I figured we would just call Maxim. I have called him many times from the states, but I didn't know what part of all of those numbers I needed to dial if we were dialing locally. Our Ukrainian travel guide came in really handy as we looked up how to make phone calls. We kept trying, unsuccessfully, to call Maxim. I could never get it to go through. By pointing and asking though our travel guide, the lady at the information desk said we had to dial "8" first. Finally, Jim was able to get Maxim, but Maxim could not hear Jim on the phone. So I went back to try again. We got through, and I started almost "yelling" "Maxim!" "Maxim", and low and behold, Maxim shows up right behind me! It was a stressful hour as we were weighing our options of how to get ahold of him, but all of that stress was immediately relieved when we finally met up with him.

Oleg, our driver, Maxim, Jim and I loaded the car (good thing we packed light!) and came to our beautiful apartment. It really is very, very nice. Soon we will post pictures, and a general description. Aftere getting everything in, Oleg drove us about a mile and dropped us off for dinner. We walked back. Maxim came along with us, so we knew what we were getting. We went to a cafeteria style place, and I must say our first experience with Ukrainian food was beyone delicious. We must eat a high protein/low carbohydrate diet, and we had no problem at all getting those needs met. Maxim, Jim and I all ate for less than 9.00 total! And, I'll say it again, the food was outstanding.

We walked back to the apartment, Maxim accompanied us to the grocery store a block away to help us get some stuff we needed, then we walked back. We put the stuff away and now are ready for bed. I believe tomorrow we are going to an internet cafe to upload this, so hopefully I'll have pictures ready by then.
Tomorrow is site seeing, as is Tuesday, and Wednesday, we will have our NAC appointment.

Until later.....



4/5/04

Welcome to KBiB.

The flight from Paris was fine--- we are spoiled, usually using hubs in Germany (the Germans take timeliness and order much more seriously than the French). Chaos is a good word for the boarding process. About an hour late, we were in the air.. slept like it was my job for the entire flight.

Immigrations and customs was a snap. Good thing Mary took Russian. We knew our luggage was on belt 4 (English sign was broken). Unless you really are a “nervous nelly”, I would not consider VIP service. Time, Plane to Lobby, was about 20 minutes.

We had a bit of a mixup with our facilitator—we missed each other in the airport. After a bit of stress and a couple of Coke Lights, he found us as we were calling his cell phone from the airport phone calling out his name--- cool!

Maxim and our driver, Oleg, whisked us in to downtown Kyiv and to our wonderful apartment. Huge by Ukrainian standards.. one bedroom, living room, large kitchen…24 hour running water and good temperature control (so far). Went to a cafeteria for lunch. Ate a little of everything (especially yummy was the “fried meat” (a little like carnitas—but Beef—I think) Crepes filled with Meat, Cabbage filled with meat, Breading filled with meat (the famous Chicken Kiev) and Cheese filled with meat (A really good cheese covered chicken breast)… Heard the Veggi-Tales 8 polish foods of Christmas?--- That is the food here---- Life is good! Oh—and if you’re a beer fan—the local draft beer is WONDERFUL and about 40 cents a glass.


Did a little grocery shopping for Breakfast stuff: Kefir (drinkable yougurt like stuff), tea, meat (thanks Dr Atkins) a little bread and a huge jug of water---- it runs light brown from the tap.

It’s now Monday morning. We are going to see the sights around Kyiv today—we wanted to go to Chernobyl tomorrow, but Maxim is trying to talk us out of it---we’ll see--- more later.


JIm


4/5/04
Well, we didn't find an internet cafe today, so we couldn't upload our journals so far. Hopefully, tomorrow morning we will find one and get our updates up-to-date.

Today was a very long, busy day. Nothing to do with the adoption, so if you are reading this only to find info about that, go ahead and skip this entry. We were sight seers today. Maxim picked us up at 10am and called us a cab. The cab took us to the Percherska Lavra. This is a large Orthodox monastery grounds, complete with caves containing the remains of many saints, a number of churches, a few museums and a very large bell tower. We started in the bell tower, climbing over 300 steps to the top of where you can go. I didn't count them, they were oh-so-helpfully numbered. The churches were so beautiful. And we saw The Museum of Miniatures, which houses about 15 or 20 individual works of art all so incredibly tiny as to require significant magnification to see. One of my favorites was a chess board, complete with chess pieces, all on the head of a pin! Amazing. (you can see about it at www.microart.kiev.ua )

From there, we got a ride (O.K, Maxim hitchiked for us-aparantly it is a very common and safe thing to do-the more dangerous part of it is the actually driving!) to change some money and get lunch. Back at "our cafeteria", we knew what we wanted, everything was so good yesterday. We did try a couple of new dishes, and they were every bit as good as everything else we have had. We had a cucumber (sliced) and cabbage (shredded) salad in a vinegrette dressing. We also had what Maxim called "fried meat" which today I swear was pork, and yesterday beef, but Jim says it was the same kind of meat both times. Basically, the meat is sauted with onions and tomatoes. Very good. Jim tried buckwheat and some kind of large, meatball type of meat. Both very good. And we had our chicken breast covered in some kind of cheese, also delicious. For dessert, we had a poppyseed roll. They are sweetened and have a poppyseed filling rolled into them. Yummy.

After lunch we continued on our city tour, seeing many, many other churches. We saw St. Sophia's, St. Vladamir's, St. Andrew's, and I'm sure some other Saint's churches as well! Each one was more beautiful than the last. It was just an amazing day.

We rode the subway --tokens cost the equivalent of around .07 U.S. dollars. Quite a bargain. Coming up from the subway, we rode the longest escalator I've ever been on! It moved quickly, but I know we were on that thing for more than 2 minutes. Then walked a little ways, and got on another one. I sudder to think how far down underground we were! We looked for an internet cafe, but were unsuccessful, then Maxim dropped us off at our apartment and he went back to his. Jim and I took another walk, even tho we literally had been walking all day. We walked to the grocery store we had visited last night to pick up the things that we forgot last night, and we explored around the area around the grocery store. There was a "Computerland" next to the grocery, so we stopped in there to see if they had internet connections. The guy there told us where the nearest internet cafe was, but by then we were too tired to go exploring more, in a place we didn't know, not speaking much at all of the language. We will try first thing in the morning. Across from the grocery is a large "mall". We thought it was an upscale store, and we thought we may go in to explore, but when we got there, it was an entire 4 floor mall. All very upscale stores, with more security guards patroling than customers shopping. No internet in there. Across the street from that, in the town square, is a large building, with "cypk" written on it. I know my Russian alphabet, and could read "circ" and knew that in Russian, that meant"Circus". We decided to check it out. There was a big sign outside with today's date, along with tomorrow and Wedneday, but we couldn't read what was going on in these days. Well, it is not a circus. It resembled an outdoor flea market, indoors,only all women's clothing. We didn't stay long to see this circus. We went to the store and bought stuff for dinner and breakfast. Came back, had our dinner (various meats and cheese on some good, crusty bread), and are waiting for Maxim to call to finalize plans for tomorrow. We are probably not doing Chernoble, but maybe heading to the underground shopping mall, which is a ways up our street. We told Maxim that we dont' "need" him tomorrow, that he certainly may come along, but if he just felt obligated to "babysit" us, we were fine on our own. We take our phrase book, point and grunt, and try to communicate. It works well. We ask people to write down numbers, since we can't listen and translate numbers quickly enough, and from that we can find prices. I know tomorrow Maxim will find out for us what time our appointment at the NAC is on Wednesday. He may have other things to do with the adoption as well, so we can do this on our own.

General impressions of Kyiv and :Ukraine 2 days into our stay:

It is definately cleaner than I thought. The people are friendlier than I thought, but then we have had Maxim to translate most of what we needed. It was a beautiful day today, warm, sunny, probably about 50 degrees. Most people still had coats on, and all of the kids we saw were in snowsuits and winter hats, but didn't seem to mind. There is much green space, well maintained parks. We were expecting almost 3rd world, but this is very much like western Europe. I've been to 2 public restrooms, which were clean and were stocked with toilet paper, and no one sitting there expecting money to keep it that way. The roads, some of them, are incredibly old, cobble stone, but they drive on them like they were perfectly smooth, newly finished black top. And, for the driving, it so far has not been as bad as southern Italy, but it is coming close. I just close my eyes and pray a lot. The only lines, indicating lanes, are the ones dividing the road into 2 ways, and it varies as to how wide each of those 2 ways are. But cars seem to squeeze through some of the most incredibly small places. They do drive on the sidewalk as well, and not just occasionally. You cannot assume that because you are on the sidewalk, you are safe! The sidewalks are very wide in many places, and I guess it is just fine to use that as an extra lane, or parking space. For all of the close driving, I've not seen any wrecks, yet, and very few cars show signs of being banged up.
The beggars have gotten to us. Seeing these old women begging on the street, knowing that they probably were proud, productive members of their society, and now, caught in the transition from Communism to Democracy, they are reduced to begging. So sad. We have so much, and take so much for granted. For instance,a broom. Big deal, right? They tie a bunch of sticks on the end of a handle, and this is their broom for keeping the street and sidewalk clean. But, clean it is!
The city is much more colorful than I had imagined. There are so many apartment buildings, I just can't get over it. It seems so strange. And Maxim says most of the apartments are privately owned, not rented. I don't know what the average price for an apartment is. There is refurbishment of buildings all over where we have been, making the outside very attractive. It is very much an alive, pulsing city, waiting to be discovered by tourists. So far, I'd recommend it for an adventure-seekers vacation! Will keep that thought updated.

Well, I'm going to close this now, and get ready for bed. We will do our very best to get this up tomorrow morning,


It’s tomorrow morning! A nice relaxing night watching Ukrainian TV--- very entertaining. Our fave was a Candid Camera rip-off. VERY funny. Lots of Commercials—many for western products.. “Mr Clean” is “Mr Proper”.. the Jingle does not quite work in Ukrainian… “Mister Proper, Mr Proper- bla bla bla blavasky.”

I got very excited seeing a wireless connection here in the apartment. They do not seem to have the security turned on, yet I can’t get in to “borrow” the connection—oh well.. we’ll be off in search of internet in just a bit. Tomorrow is the big day at the NAC--- Max will find out our appointment time this afternoon then we’ll meet him for dinner and to discuss the day ahead—more soon


Jim and Mary


4/6/04


We found it! A dumpy, yet charming internet cafe witha T-1 line--- I think we got everything loaded--- We are about a 20 minute walk from the apartment. We'll try to get back here every day we are in Kyiv!

See ya