Sentimental

A high school

I love this city. I've always been a bit European at heart and am fortunate enough to have spent time in Italy as well as a bit in Paris and London.  But living here for over a month definitely surpasses those visits!  The culture is just so beautiful and being a historian, especially one focused on European and Russian history, much of what I am experiencing is straight out of one of my books.  And I love it.  I've started telling  the girls how much they are going to miss the buildings and food but they do not seem to have developed a deep appreciation for 17th century style architecture.  Oh well.

Paris is the first European city I visited and after being there five minutes I could have died and gone to heaven, happily complete with my life.  Now Paris of course sets quite a high standard as far as European cities go, but this is a capital city too and it holds its own.  I love all the open squares, full of statues, scenic and pedestrian friendly.  I've been to old cities in the US, and you certainly do drive past monuments, but nothing compared to the European scale.  There are so many statues outside buildings and in squares, that even the residents don't know who they all are.  And it's not that they're ignorant here-it was the same in Russia, London, Italy-there are just too many to learn!

Me and my buddy, Bogdan,
I'm gonna miss that guy!

And the buildings.  Oh the buildings!  On our drive home this afternoon I was telling the girls how fabulous the buildings are here, especially compared to our boring ones back home.  Maybe it was the Mcdonalds in their stomachs or Sophia the First on the screen in front of them, but they were not in a mood to appreciate Europe.   So many of the buildings are so old and even new ones are done in the classical style.  Besides that, they are painted with a marvelous sense of color.  Forget buildings of brown, gray, metal, and glass-not that they don't have those-especially in the newer parts of the city.  But why stick to builder's beige when you can have turquoise?!  Red, salmon, pink, bright yellow-regular office buildings are so much more fun here than back home.

Anyway, I am planning a whole blog devoted to differences between the two cultures (one page alone dedicated to the superiority of chocolate.)  But I was feeling sentimental today since we have begun our countdown. I know it sounds odd, but I've read, studied, and immersed myself so much in European culture that whenever I've been here and have to leave, it makes me so sad.  Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to get back to the land of fresh coffee, peanut butter, and drinkable tap water, but this is my home too and I will miss it.

Well, I can't think of a song lyric for this rough transition, so let's just do it.

Today's visit was very fun, remember the Spanish couple who are adopting a little girl from the same orphanage?  They were back today after having court yesterday and threw a party for their little girl's group.  It was great to see them again and my girls enjoyed getting balloons and candy from them too!  Seeing all the kids in the group enjoy the fun was so memorable, and watching their little girl open presents, for the first time, and know that in just a few weeks she is going home to a family who will cherish her forever brought tears to all our eyes.

After our visit Roman drove us to Oceans Plaza (which I accidentally referred to Ocean's 11 for the second time!)  Holy cow, part of my differences blog has got to include the fact that they kick our butt when it comes to malls.  They're not shopping centers, they're mini Disneylands.  We can find most stuff at our little "produkti" but need to come to the malls for bigger and more random items-yes-sometimes the subway lets me down :(  Since you can't scrub puke out of sequined TOMS, Cecilia very much needed a new pair of shoes.  Add hand sanitizer, dried fruit, applesauce packets, and Ukrainian books, and you have quite a varied shopping trip.  But, I found great shoes and everything else on my list!  And, while Bard was paying, I even spotted a kiosk for Lviv chocolates-remember the gourmet handmade ones that we found a while ago?  I decided to buy you all some gifts and was extra pleased that the labels were in English-which is often not the case.  I bought a fun variety, thinking about who might like what and was quite satisfied until on the way home when I realized that the actual chocolates do not have English on the labels so unless I start translating a ton of random words I have no way of knowing if I am giving you chili chocolate or mint chocolate.

Huh.

Golden Gate

I was completely overstimulated from my shopping experience so the girls and I rested while Bard popped over to get a hair cut from my favorite Ukrainian hair stylist, Masha.  Since he didn't have to flirt with Riot Police, it didn't take very long and when he returned, we went out, adventuring.  We walked through the ever transforming Maidan-now they have cleared all the flower beds, planted tons, trimmed all the trees, taken down the stage, almost completely taken down the New Year Tree Memorial, and probably more I just can't take in all the changes. Oh, they cleaned Cici's puke-we know because both girls wanted to check so check we did!  We went up Kreschatyk, one of the main streets and high end shopping, and cut over to the Golden Gate which is a fortress that dates back to the 11th century and used to be part of the original city wall.  As you may have already gathered, I just love stuff like that and was thrilled to walk through the gate and see parts of the preserved wall.

New Year's Tree coming down

It was definitely an impressive walk for the girls, but they are strong Ukrainian devuchki by now so we went over and had dinner at The Burger-which is where we found all the hipsters of the city, the only restaurant we have seen a bottle of ketchup at-an event so thrilling that both girls commented on it-and paid three times more than we have at any other place.  But that was a tasty burger!

And, to our extra delight, we found a rolling carry on-to replace both the ones we managed to break in our first week of travel and snapped it up.  Shopping is a game here, it can be deceptively easy or impossibly hard, so when you find something, you buy it.  I'm actually a big follower of such a philosophy :)

All in all another good day-t minus four days!