Back on the working schedule

It is now Tuesday March 11th. As he said he would, our facilitator showed up promptly this morning to take our paperwork into the State Department (SDA) to both officially decline the referral of the little girl in DP and also to request a new appointment date. That poor guy looked as bad as I did on Sunday. We were both strickened with the same bug that I imported from DP and neither of us got virtually anything done while being bedridden. Just as well that this was a 3 day weekend. Had yesterday been a business day things would probably have either not gotten done or gotten done sloppily.

Our facilitator did get our hopes up and discussed some of his contacts and leads as well as ideas. But in his current state of health, what he can actually get done today remains to be seen. We'll contact him tomorrow; he should be better by then.

Otherwise today has been another quiet day. Shirl and I did managed a short walk to a local grocery store to stock up on a few essentials that were running low. Unfortunately when we can't even figure out the local alphabet, a lot of our shopping is guesswork. Shirley thought she was buying milk - it turned out to be buttermilk. Buttermilk tastes more like liquid, unsweetened yogurt than milk. I didn't fare much better. I thought that I was buying Orange Juice but instead it turned out to be some knd of an orange drink. It tasted like pure sugar with only a hint of orange taste. That container is staying here when its time for us to leave. Meanwhile - better luck next time.

This story reminded me of stories that my Greek immigrant family used to tell us when describing their first days in America. My favorite was when they went shopping for one night's dinner. My Great Aunt - then a teenager - and her mother walked to the grocery store to buy spaghetti. At that time neither could speak or read a word of English. When the grocery clerk asked them what they wanted, they pointed to what they thought was a box of spaghetti. It wasn't until they had gotten home when they realized that for dinner they had bought a box of straws.

I first heard that story when I was a little kid, probably in the late 1960s. That would have made the actual incident nearly 50 years previous to it being told to me. Yet despite it being that long ago, it still drew belly laughs from my elderly Greek family.

This afternoon while I napped (again) Shirley took a walk to a site that the Ukrainians call "The Golden Gate". As I mentioned before, Kiev is 1,500 years old. At one time centuries ago Kiev was completely surrounded by a wall and the only two ways in and out of the city were through two different gates at opposite ends of the city. A gate for commoners and the "Golden Gate" for rich folks. The Golden Gate is fairly close to our apartment and Shirley took pictures. Unfortunately they're not digital and we don't have a scanner here so I can't post them yet. A few days ago I did see the Gate from the street and it is very impressive.

We did manage to find a TV station in English. Actually we managed to find two. One was the BBC world news and the other was CNN. I'd just as soon say that we found one station since I'd rather watch a Russian soap opera than the Clinton News Network.

We are loaded with DVDs and books from home so there is plenty for us to do here.

Just curious - do any of you have skype? You can go to http://www.skype.com/ and download it for free. Its an easy way for us to communicate and I've been Instant Messaging friends and family from all over the world. Now we didn't bring any webcams or webmikes so we can't do any fancy Star Trek style of communication. But you can IM us if you're interested. "Steve.Zimnes" is my skype id. Anyway, it was just a thought.

Hope all is well back home. How much snow is left in Ohio?

Be well and God bless.....



Steve