Yesterday we were hoping for the phone call to say we had another appt. at the SDA, but instead just as we were going out sightseeing, Lesya called to say we would be picked up in 45 mins to meet her at the SDA. We were picked up by a different driver called Vadim, we arrived at the office and Lesya was not there yet. We waited 30mins for her to show up. She then explained that we had an appt that day with the SDA but she knew there were no healthy children to be had. She has pushed the SDA to let us have an appt. on March 9 when she is sure we will be presented with a healthy child. This journey is not for the faint of heart and we are really having to roll with things. This news is really hard to take as we will have been here 4 weeks by the time we go back to the SDA. We are really putting everything we have in to trusting Lesya. So we sit for another week in the hopes it all turns around. We got dropped off at Helen's flat and she took us to a cool toy store. Now we have not seen any motor bikes on the road, but we have made up for it by finding a model Ducati Monster S4, which Martin felt he needed to buy. Think he is missing seeing the yellow mistress once in a while. :) Then it was home on the subway (we are getting really good at that now) for a late supper and watching some TV shows that Paul downloaded for us. Today so far we have not done too much, now that we know we are not leaving we went and did a big grocery shop (had hoped to take pictures but left the chip in the computer), vacuumed and cleaned up in general. We are going to go to St. Vladimir Cathedral and then onto the Golden Gate. We have had sun today and it is +5 so the ice is melting on the sidewalks and becoming lakes. Hopefully later I will add some pictures from today.
TTFN
Jennifer, Martin and Laura xxxx
Well we had a really nice day, after lunch we headed for the subway (our new form of transportation) and went to the Cathedral I mentioned earlier. You will see many people walking down the sidewalk and stop in front of a church to pay respect then continue on their way. The cathedral itself was beautiful with all the paintings on the walls going up into the bell towers. Lots of gold everywhere and candles lit. For those of you who may not know Ukraine is largely Orthodox Christian churches/cathedrals. The outside is painted yellow with blue domes and 1 gold dome. This looked wonderful in the sunlight today.
From here we walked to the Golden Gate. This was once 1 of the Gates into the walled city this was 2.5 miles long and the gate was original constructed in 1037. They have rebuilt most of it in 1982 for the 1500th anniversary of Kiev. We stopped and got some wonderful pastry’s at what you could say is a portable type building, with a small window to order at. Really don’t know how to tell you more than that. Will have to get a picture to show you. We had been seeing these but today got up the nerve to try them, it could become our new favourite snack. These only cost us a $1 for all 3 and were the size of a large cinnamon bun.
We made our way to the University of Kiev which is completely painted red and very large, worth seeing just because of the colour. This is how you know it is a University in Ukraine.
Across the road is a very nice park and probably even nicer in the summer, we found some playground equipment for Laura and there were a lot of other children there playing as well even though it was fairly deep in snow and water. By this time the sun was setting and it was back to the subway station (we take this as it is a very big hill up from our place to get to these things) we got home just in daylight (6 o'clock).
As a side note Martin is making it his mission to get Ukrainian people to smile, we have noticed that most don’t and even when you smile at them they do not smile back. We are hoping that with spring just around the corner people might smile more. Now if you have smiled at this then Martin has accomplished something at least.
Well it is bye for now
Jennifer, Martin and Laura Lou
Well we had a really nice day, after lunch we headed for the subway (our new form of transportation) and went to the Cathedral I mentioned earlier. You will see many people walking down the sidewalk and stop in front of a church to pay respect then continue on their way. The cathedral itself was beautiful with all the paintings on the walls going up into the bell towers. Lots of gold everywhere and candles lit. For those of you who may not know Ukraine is largely Orthodox Christian churches/cathedrals. The outside is painted yellow with blue domes and 1 gold dome. This looked wonderful in the sunlight today.
From here we walked to the Golden Gate. This was once 1 of the Gates into the walled city this was 2.5 miles long and the gate was original constructed in 1037. They have rebuilt most of it in 1982 for the 1500th anniversary of Kiev. We stopped and got some wonderful pastry’s at what you could say is a portable type building, with a small window to order at. Really don’t know how to tell you more than that. Will have to get a picture to show you. We had been seeing these but today got up the nerve to try them, it could become our new favourite snack. These only cost us a $1 for all 3 and were the size of a large cinnamon bun.
We made our way to the University of Kiev which is completely painted red and very large, worth seeing just because of the colour. This is how you know it is a University in Ukraine.
Across the road is a very nice park and probably even nicer in the summer, we found some playground equipment for Laura and there were a lot of other children there playing as well even though it was fairly deep in snow and water. By this time the sun was setting and it was back to the subway station (we take this as it is a very big hill up from our place to get to these things) we got home just in daylight (6 o'clock).
As a side note Martin is making it his mission to get Ukrainian people to smile, we have noticed that most don’t and even when you smile at them they do not smile back. We are hoping that with spring just around the corner people might smile more. Now if you have smiled at this then Martin has accomplished something at least.
Well it is bye for now
Jennifer, Martin and Laura Lou
The Golden Gate
No comments:
Post a Comment