A Saturday of Exploring

Baby Arden. We went over to our friends Morgan and Kristina's house for dinner last night. Babies are always the highlight.

Sunset from our apartment window.

Dinner at one of the best restraunts in Kiev. QSI took all the new teachers out. It was a great time. There are a lot of us!

Jon and I at the WWII memorial.

Holly, Jon, me and Rachel posin'

The starving girl statue reminds us of the seriousness of the Ukrainian past.

Great church domes!

View from on top. You can see the river and then the "new" side of Kiev over the far banks.

Great sidewalk picture. Cobblestone streets in this part of town. Not ideal for heals, but very cool to see.

A Russian Orthodox monk that was willing to take some time to address all the many women coming up asking for blessing and such.

A huge circle made of the "Ukrainian" Eater Egg! Love the colors!

Jon being oh-so-serious with the cannons.

The Iron Lady overlooking the city of Kiev.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Hello from Ukraine! Things are shaping up around here and getting closer to falling into place. For one, the weather is finally cooperating! The heat spell broke earlier in the week and it has been refreshing since then. With highs in the mid-70’s it makes it so much more “pleasurable” to cram into a bus or practically sit on someone’s lap in the metro. So, that is great for a change!

This week was mostly made up of orientation days at school. All of the new teachers are here now and we have been busy, busy trying to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable. Seems like every night after school we would either go over to someone’s place for dinner or have people over to play cards and have ice cream. So, we are enjoying having so many friends to choose from and keeping busy trying to ignore that school is just around the corner!

Yesterday was a big exploring day. We meet up with a handful of people in the park close to our house at about 9:30am and made our way downtown on the metro. It was so nice and cool that I wore a jacket and at some points in the shade, a light scarf! We got down town and first came across a monument commemorating the deaths in World War II. There was an eternal flame at the foot of the monument along with a number of headstones that we couldn’t read. The view from the monument was spectacular. You could see the river that runs through the city (The Dnieper River), a couple of golden domes that we were on our way too and the “new” side of town on the left bank of the river. Very cool on such a spectacular day. In the background of the monument you could see another structure dedicated to the “artificial famine” that Russia enforced on the people of Ukraine in the 1930’s. During this time of oppression more than 3 million Ukrainians starved to death. There is a statue of an emaciated young girl at the front of the memorial site, very touching and will take your breath away. The people of Ukraine have been through a terrible history of struggle and oppression.

Our destination for the day was the “underground cave church”. It is kind of a compound of golden-topped churches that is the “Mecca” for the Russian Orthodox religion. Under the main church there are catacombs where the Russian Orthodox monks have been mummified and kept in glass boxes for thousands of years. Ladies had to wear a skirt and a scarf over their heads to do down. It was best if you paid a couple grivna to get a candle because there were no lights underground. The tunnels were tight and small and there were different chambers that held different monks. A little creepy. Most people were there on a mission, kissing the monk’s boxes and stopping to pray at every one. Very interesting.

We also stopped at a miniature museum. There was a man who made things that were microscopic. For real! The museum had about 25 different exhibit spots set up with microscopes. Some of the craziest that I remember were: a chess board, with all the pieces, made from gold, sitting on the head of a PIN; an Egyptian scene of 3 camels, a pyramid and a palm tree, also made from gold, in the eye of a NEEDLE; a portrait painted on the cross section of a POPPY SEED; a small rose made inside the strand of a human HAIR… and there were soooo many more. My eyes left that place being confused and fussy. Crazy weird.

One of the last places we walked to was to visit “Mother Russia”. We don’t know much about her, put she is part of the museum of the Great Patriotic War, stands at 62 meters above Kiev and is known at the “Motherland Monument”. At the spot where she stands, there was a battle of 4 million troops between the Soviets and the Germens in World War II. Fatalities were estimated at nearly 3 million.

Tomorrow, Monday, the 23rd, we start another round of orientation with all of the returning teachers back. So, a whole bunch more people to meet. We have kind of forgotten that out little group of new teachers aren’t the only teachers here… so it will be interesting once we all get together. Still don’t really have my office up and running. The school is pretty much still a mess. We went in this afternoon to help Rachel, the Preschool coordinator move some stuff around in her room… and every room looked the way it looked on the first day of summer. A long way to go still. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday will be HUGE days of preparation. But looking forward to getting the kids in on Thursday! We’ll keep you posted!

Hope all is well back home! LOVE, Alyssa and Jon