1. After a successful trip to the local grocery.
2. The view from our 11th floor apartment.
3. The front of our building at night. There's a movie theater on the ground floor.
[Phil]
We're finally here after a very long day of flying and waiting in lines. Our apartment is huge and has an amazing view. It's right off the main street, Kreschatyk, in an older high rise (12 floors) building that looks over the street below. Best of all, it has high-speed internet, so we'll be able to update the blog from home.
The weather is beautiful, around 65 degrees with a sunny sky and big puffy clouds. We are glad we brought our jackets, as this seems almost cold to us after being in NC. Actually, after the sun went down, it did get pretty chilly (in the low 50's and windy). But it feels wonderful after such a long summer. An older woman in the lobby was telling the concierge that there were such wonderful "fresh breezes". Speaking of the concierge, she is very friendly and thrilled that I can speak Russian. The same goes for Nikolai, the driver that picked us up at the airport. I think I spoke more Russian today than the entire previous trip.
As I mentioned earlier, we planned to go back to the Ukrainian restaurant O'Panas (http://ukraine.bytsko.com/en/restaurant/r3456.html) for our first meal this trip. We arrived there around 7:30, and the place was totally packed. The only free table was one near the door. In fact, it was the EXACT SAME TABLE that we sat in the last time we were there. We changed our order a bit, however. Robin had Ukrainian borsch and a Greek salad, and I had solyanka soup (a beef soup similar to borsch but without the beets) and golubtsy, which are cabbage leaves stuffed with ground beef and pork plus spices. And of course we had our inaugural 100 grams of vodka.
We're finally here after a very long day of flying and waiting in lines. Our apartment is huge and has an amazing view. It's right off the main street, Kreschatyk, in an older high rise (12 floors) building that looks over the street below. Best of all, it has high-speed internet, so we'll be able to update the blog from home.
The weather is beautiful, around 65 degrees with a sunny sky and big puffy clouds. We are glad we brought our jackets, as this seems almost cold to us after being in NC. Actually, after the sun went down, it did get pretty chilly (in the low 50's and windy). But it feels wonderful after such a long summer. An older woman in the lobby was telling the concierge that there were such wonderful "fresh breezes". Speaking of the concierge, she is very friendly and thrilled that I can speak Russian. The same goes for Nikolai, the driver that picked us up at the airport. I think I spoke more Russian today than the entire previous trip.
As I mentioned earlier, we planned to go back to the Ukrainian restaurant O'Panas (http://ukraine.bytsko.com/en/restaurant/r3456.html) for our first meal this trip. We arrived there around 7:30, and the place was totally packed. The only free table was one near the door. In fact, it was the EXACT SAME TABLE that we sat in the last time we were there. We changed our order a bit, however. Robin had Ukrainian borsch and a Greek salad, and I had solyanka soup (a beef soup similar to borsch but without the beets) and golubtsy, which are cabbage leaves stuffed with ground beef and pork plus spices. And of course we had our inaugural 100 grams of vodka.
[Robin]
We are a little bleary-eyed after not getting much sleep on the plane last night. Tomorrow we have our appointment at the adoption agency, SDA, at 10:00 a.m. Konstantin is meeting us there. We are looking forward to going and hope our post tomorrow is full of good news.
2 comments:
Can you adopt a bag of mushroom-flavored potato chips for me! Good luck with everything...glenn
Back in the USSR! You don't know how lucky you are...
Zhelayu vsyo dobrovo zavtra!
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