LAST DAY IN UKRAINE-TRIP #1

Today is our last day in Ukraine. We are headed back home and have an overnight in the highly overpriced city of London. We were able to have breakfast with Karen and Maxim and take some last minute photos of downtown Kiev. The return trip is bittersweet-on the one hand it's a good feeling to be able to be going home to see our kids Elyse, Alex, and Addie. On the other hand it's disappointing that we are not coming home with Ruslan, Yuri and Alina.

We enjoyed breakfast at a cafe with Maxim and Karen.

We took a few pictures downtown Kiev this morning.
Karen & Monique

Zenon posing in his new flag!



I did however want to share with you (our faithful relatives, friends and fans) a little taste of Ukrainian culture/idiosyncrasies.

We thought we would give you a window into some of the daily living on our trip here to Ukraine. Lest any of you think that this was a "vacation".


We experienced some very good food here. But discovered that the price in the menu for food doesn't mean the total price for the entree, but the price per gram, they weigh food from restaurants! The other thing we noticed right away is that the food items are cooked one item at a time. This means the first person to get their food will most likely be done with their meal by the time the last person gets their food. We discovered at most restaurants that the food is not prepared to be served to all parties at the same time! So, when your meal came, you just began to eat or it would be cold by the time the last meal was served! Unfortunately, we have had fairly constant "nausea"--and think we've both lost at least ten to fifteen pounds! So, if any of you are interested in a sure-fire way to lose some weight--come to Ukraine!

We became very aware of needing to use the WC(toilet). We made sure we went before we ventured out. This was a quickly learned lesson because there was a fee to use the public restrooms (not that it was expensive)! We agreed that gas-station bathrooms ranked higher than these--UGH! Monique had never used the bathroom without a seat before!

An "electric bus"
We had the privilege of "living among the natives" by riding public transportation, renting apartments instead of hotels, etc... You quickly adapt to "the smell". Not that its a pleasant smell, more like I have to vomit smell. The worse news is that as time went along, I could tell that even my body started to produce this same type of "odor". When you ride public transportation during rush hour, personal space consists of the person next to you rubbing all over you. Forget about air flow, windows are not always open, so you are able to enjoy a warm stench. OK, enough about bad BO.

Personal Space and Waiting In Line. We in America have come to expect our "own personal space". This consists of approximately about 18 inches of air space between you and the next person. This isn't so here. When waiting in line for anything, we expect to go one at a time. When some people come into a location requiring a wait, they might look to see if a line exists, but many of them immediately walked right up to the head of the line (what we would call "cutting" or "line jumping")and began taking care of their own business. The next thing which was a little uncomfortable while being in line is that as one person is speaking across the desk/through the window, the next person in line is shoving to the desk/window as well --any many times begins to talk right over the person taking care of business. We decided that in order to "keep your place in line" you must practically hover right on top of the next person in order to keep your spot or someone might just cut you without a second glance!

Cabbage for sale At the markets, all kinds of foods are purchased. Cabbage is a staple here. We have never seen so much cabbage in our lives, let alone truckloads of it for sale.

We hope that you were able to get a feel of some of the culture here!