Last Chapters

Well, we're nearing the end of what has been a great, great trip. We've been running all over, doing everything we can think to do, and as Papa said to Ellie as we walked in the door at the end of the day: "I think we've run out of adventures."

We did do a couple things today before calling it quits. We headed out to the seminary to see where Nana works and to see the progress on their new building. It is colossal. Ellie has made it a habit of becoming a surrogate grand-daughter to every doorkeeper we meet. The one at the seminary gave her a pair of hand-knitted socks! If you're keeping score at home, that's one pair of socks and about six metric tons of candy accumulated thus far.

I talked my dad into doing a little craziness before the end of our time together. I had said back in the early fall when we were planning this trip that I wanted to do a polar-bear-club-style jump into the ultra-frigid Dneiper River, the big fat river that runs through Kiev. Since today was a balmy one (high 30s), and our last day here, it seemed like the time was right. We ran out about 100 feet, dunked ourselves under, and ran back to the shore like wild men. It was a blast. And a little chilly. My dad gets the Manly Man award for the day -- look at him in this picture! It's like he's taking a walk on the beach! I was screaming my head off. In a masculine way. Really.

We also rode the yellow bus to a toy store today where Ellie got a replacement snow globe for the one that broke earlier in the trip and perhaps more important, some bus tickets as well. She has developed quite an obsession with bus tickets.

Tomorrow morning I will get up and take some pictures around the area before we go and then we'll jump on a plane and begin our trip home. This will probably be our last blog. Thanks so much for blogging with us while we've been here! It's been great for us -- it has made us intentional about collecting and remembering our stories each day. While I doubt we'll blog when we get home, hopefully we will be equally faithful to collect and share stories. See you soon!

Merry Christmas!

Break out the eggnog -- it's Christmas! Well, in Ukraine, at least. Since the holiday schedule here is directed more by the Orthodox calendar, Christmas comes a little later. But hey, we're always up for a little more Christmas. As long as there's food. Which, of course, there was.

So today at church, we celebrated Christmas with a pageant. It's fun to see a story that's the same everywhere. Makes you feel home no matter where you are, if you can pardon the cliche. Ellie felt so much at home that she broke into a rousing chorus of Away in a Manger right in the middle.

In addition to some same stories, we've heard stories very different from our own experience too. At church today, we met a man who was a Christian long before it was condoned by the Soviet regime. Because of his faith, he was exiled to Siberia for seven years, and could have been rendered unable, as were most Christians, to get a high-profile job. Due to his brilliance as an architect, however, the government looked the other way and gave him a post. He has recently overseen the construction of Kiev's new seminary, of which his son is the president.

We also saw a man whose scalp was covered with crude paper bandages, recovering from surgery to remove cancer from his brain. He watched intently as his wife performed in the Christmas pageant. It was especially poignant as we found he had, after years of denying the faith of his wife, come to Christ on what easily could have been his deathbed. This was his first church service.

Tonight, friends of my parents joined us for dinner. With them was their new adopted grand-daughter, Vika. Vika is nine and has spent her life to this point in a Kiev orphanage. While many guardians of orphans in Ukraine see adoption only as the potential for a payoff, Vika's great-grandmother sat down and asked many questions to those who had come to adopt her. "Why do you want her?" she wondered. Satisfied by their answers, she had two requests: one, not to spoil her, and two, to never let her forget from where she had come. Tonight, she blew bubbles with our delighted daughter.

What a fortunate day of stories for us. We hope this time of rest for all of you has generated stories for your family. May we and you never forget from where you have come.

The Greatest Papa on Earth!

Gather round, children, and let me tell you about the time when Papa got us all into the circus when it looked like all hope was lost.

First thing this morning, we went down the elevator from Nana & Papa's apartment and were greeted by the really sweet doorkeeper lady, who asked us about our plans for the day. We told her we were going to the circus. "God help you," she said.

We went to get a taxi. The first driver was too expensive. The second driver was, we think, inebriated. The third seemed pretty good compared to the first two, so we hopped in. We pulled up to the circus, only to find that it was sold out until January 14! This was especially disappointing since Nana had asked if it was necessary to reserve tickets, only to be told she didn't need to. I told Ellie we weren't going to the circus after all. But Papa had a few tricks up his sleeve.

First, Nana went to one of the ticket-takers to make sure there indeed were no tickets. "Sold out," she told her. Nana was then told by a questionable source to go to the office to buy tickets there. No one in the office. Papa went outside to see if anyone was scalping tickets. No dice. Papa thought about trying to buy tickets from one of the people going in, but felt awkward depriving some four-year-old of a trip to the circus. He can be really sentimental sometimes. Finally, after much finagling, Papa found a ticket-taker whose friend was a circus administrator. "My kids are here from America," he told the important circus lady. "There must be something that can be done. No cost is too high." Well now, in Ukraine, those are the magic words. He slipped her a 100-hryvnia note (about $20). "There are no seats," she told him. "But do you mind sitting on the stairs?" Heck no, we didn't mind sitting on the stairs. It's a much better story that way anyway, what with the bribery and broken fire codes and all.

Turns out that there ended up being four empty seats, which we gobbled up. The circus may have been a little anticlimactic compared to getting in, but it was fun too. Three words for you: PORCUPINES ON SLIDES. You don't get to see that every day. They brought out boars and tigers and a lion too. It's too bad that circuses are notorious for abusing animals, because I'll tell you -- we had great fun watching them jump through hoops of fire and walk on balance beams and eat meat from sticks and all that.

This afternoon, we headed over to the park so Ellie could satiate her digging desire that went unfulfilled yesterday. In the summer, this park has a trampoline that they harness you into so you can go super-high and probably puke. How cool is that? They also had train rides and a bunch of four-wheelers kids could drive. About the only thing missing were those egg-cup spinners they have at Lower Cascades that terrify children. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Oh, so THIS is a water museum...

Well, our questions were answered today and we found out just what a "water museum" entails. I don't know exactly what I had been picturing, but what we got was a virtual tour of the water cycle in Ukraine. We made a trip as "raindrops" down from the sky (in an elevator) into the crevices of the earth, into the rivers, into plumbing pipes, and into the sewers. It was quite a journey. We got to pet rats (dead), fish (alive), and then stood in a kiddie pool full of bubble solution and were put inside giant bubbles. Oh, and we saw this big toilet. "This," said our tour guide, "is the largest toilet in Ukraine." Let's hope so. All in all, it was quite cool.

There was also a river-digging exhibit, where you got to shovel sand and redirect water currents, which was great and all, but you could only stand there and dig for five minutes before being shooed on to the next thing. This was hard on our shovel-loving daughter, who is accustomed to splashing at Playscape (Children's Museum) until her brain turns to mush. We promised to take her to the playground to dig this afternoon, but the first snow since our arrival put the damper (literally) on that plan. The dreary weather, however, provided the perfect opportunity for the ever-resourceful Nana to make Christmas cookies with Ellie. She is currently whiling away her life blissfully in a world of multi-colored sprinkles.

We are off to dinner in a few minutes at a Cossack-themed restaurant that my parents have never tried. Always a little dangerous. Tomorrow (da da duh!) is the circus! Ellie and I have never been to a circus (nor, to my knowledge, has Leah), so I am exicted to see the tigers eat some clowns. That is what they do, right?

Can't Spell Funicular Without Fun

There I was, outside a manor house in the countryside somewhere. I was being drawn toward the door and suddenly, I was inside. I saw a stairway with a light on the landing. I was pulled toward it and found myself upstairs, looking down a long hallway. At the end of the hallway was a bedroom, and being really tired, I was eager to get to it. Only this time, instead of being drawn in, I was being pulled away, like zooming out on a camera. "No," I thought. "I want to sleep!"

Such went my dreams last night in a kind of half-awake fog -- the first night I had any real trouble sleeping since we got here. I woke up thinking it was morning and that Ellie would be awake any minute, only to discover it was 2:45. Things have been a little off-kilter since, and Leah and I took three-hour naps this afternoon. Whew!

Really the only other thing we've accomplished today is going down to the 'Spusk, a street of art and souvenirs, looking for a gift for our wonderful cat-sitting neighbor. We're assuming the cat will be alive when we return, and bought a thank-you gift in such anticipation. Ellie is becoming more and more indoctirinated into Ukrainian modes of transportation. Today we took a funicular -- kind of a glorified ski lift that takes you up to the street of souvenirs. The metro (subway) has made such an impression on her that yesterday she took her standard "please help such & such love and follow you" prayer for everyone she knows and added to the end "on the metro." "Please help Nana & Papa love and follow you... on the metro." I think the only form of transportation she has not undertaken here is the "overnight train," a train that takes you a destination two hours away by car, but mysteriously takes all night to do it. It's like a time machine, of sorts. A very impractical time machine. Anyway, she is going to be quite bored going back to car-only transport in the States and the rigors of the carseat, from which she has had a two-week vacation.

Our circus plans were bumped back to Saturday, and tomorrow I believe we are going to a "water museum." That is a mystery to me, so I'll have to tell you what it is after we see it.

"You can't smell it in a picture."

All right, first off a clarification from yesterday. It's the Turks, not the Ukrainians, who are obsessed with all things Native American. So we're still looking for a reason to explain the abundance of buffalo at the Kiev Zoo. I'll keep you posted if we find anything out.

As we pass the midpoint of our trip, Ellie and Leah took a day to lounge around the apartment and catch up on rest. They made playdough spaghetti, had lunch in a tent, and straightened all our shoes. We should have known Leah had a secret cleaning agenda. Ellie has developed a preoccupation with dusting and sweeping since we got here. This baby boy cannot get here soon enough -- I am need of a comrade.

I went with my parents out to Irpin, a suburb of Kiev, for a thank-you party to the staff of the seminary, of which my mom is a part. It was fun for me on many counts -- I got to get out of the city, I got to spend some time playing with our new camera, I saw a sign on a house that warned of an "evil dog" inside. But most of all, I got to eat some shashlik. Basically, meat on a stick. Meat, of course, is good. And a stick, well, that just makes everything better. You can see the shashlik above, but as the Ukrainian cooking it mentioned to me, you can't smell it in a picture. Bummer. Because it smelled rockin'.

We are back on the Kiev circuit tomorrow, maybe with a trip to the circus. The sign advertising the circus says "Circus on Water," and shows a clown who appears less-than-enthusiastic with the idea. Undoubtedly, this will be interesting!

Whoa, Buffalo!

To the zoo! Today, after heading to the grocery and munching on some yummy poppy-seed pastries, we headed to the zoo. At the entrance to the zoo, you are greeted with a gargantuan buffalo statue, and this is for good reason. Perhaps tied to Ukraine's inexplicable love of all things Native American, the zoo had about a bajillion buffalo. One tiger, one elephant, a handful of other animals, and a bajillion buffalo. Fat buffalo, skinny buffalo, buffalo who climb on rocks. Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo. Friendly, too. They come right up to the fence and flare their big buffalo nostrils at you. Woohoo!

Ellie, after minor setbacks upon discovering the absence of dolphins and meerkats, found a new favorite in the fox. And it really was cool. Right at her eye-level, the fox would run up, look at her in the eye, and run away. Run up, look, run away, repeat. We finally managed to convince her that the ostriches were cool enough to leave the fox, but it took some doing. Other highlights included some ginormous porcupines (like pig-sized), a leopard who actually looked like he was ready to kill and eat somebody(this is what I want to see when I go to the zoo), and some signs for a "behemoth" (hippo), which I didn't actually see.

The picture above is SUPPOSED to be us roaring with this scary-looking lion. Apparently Leah and Ellie didn't get the memo.

After the zoo, we hit McDonalds, and this combo made for a happy day for young Ellie. We even had broccoli at McDonalds! McDonalds-style broccoli, of course, which is smothered with cheese and deep-fried. Some things are the same everywhere you go.