Two Days of Travel but we are FINALLY Here

Monday, June 06, 2011

12:00 pm Drive to Norfolk International Airport early because the kids couldn't wait to get there.

3:00 Get on first plane to Washington DC.

4:00 Land in Washington DC and wait till our next flight.

6:45 Get on next plane to Germany for 8 hour flight through the night chasing the sun across the horizon. Arrive in Germany at 9:00 am

9:00 am- 1:00 Wait some more, eat, sleep, read, play DS

1:00 Get on last flight to Kiev. Arrived in Ukraine 4:00 pm

We have been here for less then a day and the best way I can describe how I feel is pure culture shock.
Thankfully we have a English speaking home to stay in for our few days in Kiev but after we leave here I am concerned. Now I know how all those immigrants feel when they come to America. We can't read the streets signs, names on the stores, names on food in the supermarket. Thankfully again Karen, our host in Kiev, took me to the supermarket but it was nothing like our supermarket. It started to occur to me why American have such a obesity issue. I bought pretzels for Mark and the kids and it was, what Mark would consider a single serving bag. There was no such thing as a big bag or family size bag of pretzels. Kind of makes you think. The largest juice I found was about a pint. That's one days serving for 4 people in our house. Eggs were sold by the 10 not the dozen. No such things as peanut butter. I should have brought some. Grape jelly….what's that. Bread in a package verses fresh….very rare. Turkey cold cuts….no where to be found….lots of ham and more ham and chicken.

Since we got here late we went out for our first Ukraine dinner, PIZZA. Funny right. It was actually very different then our pizza and they serve sushi everywhere, even in the pizza restaurant. After walking around with Karen last night I think we woke up a little shell shocked, afraid to leave the safety of her apartment without her. We laid around until 11:00 getting the will power to venture out on our own. We found a little playground that Karen told us about but the kids didn't want to play. Aydan enjoyed chasing the pigeons but that was it. No body seems to speak English. This is very surprising to me. I thought that since we were in a big city many people would speak English. Oh well, live and learn.

I started the kids on Russian Rossetta stone today just to see if they pick anything up while we are here. Why not. Our Ukrainian Facilitator is meeting with us today at 1:00 to go over our SDA appointment and other stuff.

Looking forward to what she has to say. Until then.

-Deb

Ok. So that was Deb's version. Here's mine.

Flight out of Norfolk Sunday at 3:00. That part was easy. Easy flight to Washington DC Dulles Airport. 3.5 hour layover. OK, I can live with that. Expensive dinner at the airport at Max and Erma's. OK food. Leave DC on Lufthansa flight to Munich. Best flight I have flown on "hands down." Great plane, great crew and edible food. Landed about 3am EDT or 9am Munich. Flew in over beautiful country side. Would love to visit Germany one day. Had an expensive breakfast of croissant, ham sandwich, schnitzle w/ pretzel, a pretzel, coffee, 3 waters. Total $30 US. WOW. Was that just because of the airport or are those prices the norm? I hope not. 4.5 hour layover. Jump on another Lufthansa flight to Kiev, Ukraine for 2.5 hours. Land at their international airport. Norfolk is huge compared to it. Walked of aircraft down steps to tarmac and onto bus. Go to terminal and right through customs. No problems. My observation-you either have to hate your life, job or just be overly serious for a Ukrainian customs agent. Get luggage from ground transportation and find our ride. Constantine, the husband of our Kiev Facilitator. Very nice, enough English to get by. Drives a Ford-go figure. For some reason I was surprised by this. At least it had AC-LOL. Kids have been great up to this point. They are running on fumes. So am I but I will survive. Aydan had one mild meltdown in Kiev airport while waiting for Constantine. I quietly asked her what was wrong and got "the look." I am no dummy. Left it alone and went to look for Constantine.

Ride to Kiev was uneventful. Feeling good at this point. As we got closer to the city, started to see classic Stalinistic architecture. Buildings look like concrete bunkers, old and run down. Once in city, picked up Karen from Orphans Promise which is a CBN organization. She was kind enough to let us crash at her apartment til Thursday. Apartment is a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom that can best be described as utilitarian. Ukranians are not paid much so live extremely simply. This was the time culture shock began to reveal its ugly head to me. Apartment is on fifth floor. There is an elevator the size of a closet. Actually, correction, size of a small pantry. Our closets are enormous. Actually, apartments here have no closets. They have wards-furniture to store clothing. The elevator is probably 4 feet by 4 feet square. 4-5 people max. OK-no problems so far. Back to realization Americans have it all to well. Refrigerator, small(tiny) by our standards, has only what is necessary for a couple days. No frozen cows or pigs in the freezer. No gallons of milk or juice. No hen house of eggs either. This is normal I am told. Stove is old and gas. Instructions-turn gas main on that is located on wall, turn burner on and light with match, do not lose eyebrows in process. Oh, be careful not to ignite the curtains either. Dishwasher? Yup. His name is Mark-LOL. Clothes washer-Yes. Very small and in bathroom. Dryers do not exist in Ukraine. there is a drying rack in the bedroom. Shower? Of course. They are not barbarians. Oh-no hot water. Yes they have hot water, its just turned off for two weeks. Apparently every region has the hot water turned off for 2 weeks at a time. We were just lucky enough to hit the right week here. Funny. Cold showers. Never saw Aydan so rigid when I helped him. Air-conditioning consisted of opening windows, without screens, and hope for a breeze. Temperature is low/mid 80's during day. a little stuffy in the apartment but not to bad. Sleeping with windows open is a bit noisy with all the street traffic with includes cars obviously but also street trolleys (noisy) and one loose manhole cover that goes clank clank each time a car or the street trolley goes over it.....all night long. Since I was so exhausted anyway, I still slept through the night. Woke at 7am locally. By the way, the time difference is 7 hours.

Today, Tuesday, we woke up and said goodbye to Karen, our host, who was off to work. OK, now realization that we have no interpreter hits me. Karen did tell us of a park around the corner with some play equipment, so that is our initial destination this morning before we meet the lawyer, Natalia. Walked to the park and found a very small play area that is very much left to the habits of the people that use it as well as those that decide to use it for advertisement purposes, graffiti. Angel did not want to play and Aydan chased the pigeons for a while. So we left. Ended walking to what I call a local convenience store for a few things. Language barrier becomes and issue when she tries to ring up orange juice and has a problem. She takes the orange juice to the back, I assume to get the price or ask someone, and returns with.......nothing. HMMMM. I try to ask/sign/look like a fool to communicate about the OJ and get a curt 'nayt' or NO when she realizes I have no clue. So I say 'uncle' and buy what is there and go back to the apartment. Culture shock hits hard. We go back to the apartment to wait for the lawyer, Natalia. While there I confess to Deb that this is going to be more difficult than I had imagined. Mostly because of the language barrier. It occurs to me that out of everything I feel I am missing, lack of communication is the most difficult. Not being able to know what is being said, how to ask for the most simplest things, like the bathroom, is quite eye opening and is the thing that puts me the most outside my comfort zone. Thats it for now. Check back.

-Mark