Saturday April 5 - the weekend is here

Greetings from Kiev,



Yesterday at about 7pm our facilitator came to our apartment to fill us in on an earlier meeting that he had with the SDA. He also added that on Monday at about noon we're to go to the SDA for a meeting regarding our case. Please note that this is NOT an appointment, only a meeting. There will therefore be no news to report until Monday afternoon at the earliest regarding an appointment. Possibly longer, depending on how quickly the SDA moves.


For whom it may concern - my birthday pizza dinner was nice last night. We found a small pizzeria near the apartment. We had eaten at this particular pizza chain before back when we were in Khmelnytsky around March 21st for our 2nd appointment. So we knew that they had decent pizza and were very reasonable priced. We couldn't decide if we wanted pizza with salami or pizza with "fungh" (mushrooms). So we opted for one of each. It cost about $7 for both. There was no way that Shirley and I could eat both pizzas. Of course that meant plenty of leftovers. Looks like we will be eating my birthday dinner throughout the weekend, or at least through today.



As chaotic as the traffic is in Kiev, it becomes exponentially worse during rush hour which is when we headed home from dinner. The main streets are so clogged; they become essentially parking lots. And don't even try getting out of a side street onto a main street because even when the lights change, there is still traffic blocking the intersection. I simply had to post a couple of pics from Kievian rush hour. When the green "walk" light is lit, it is still neccesary to step around cars blocking the intersection. If you look at the 2nd pic and find the green walk light, just above it you will see a number that I think said 36 (you may have to click on the pic to blow it up). That number is your countdown; you have that many seconds to cross the street. And when that green number gets to zero, you'd better be clear or you may wind up with tire tracks across your feet!





Leave it to my beautiful wife to surprise me with a birthday cake when we got back to the apartment. It was a delicious whipped cream walnut/almond combination - next to ice cream cake anything with nuts reigns supreme! It was a good thing that I had a decent amount of pizza for dinner. Even though I don't have a sweet-tooth, I am a nut for nuts and could have easily eaten the whole dessert by myself. What I loved even more was the price. The cost of the cake was about 8 hrivnas; about $1.60 for the whole thing (less than a cost of a slice of cake at this internet cafe). At first Shirl was embarassed to tell me how much (or should I say, how little) the cake cost but she keeps forgetting that when it comes to money I am a cheapskate's cheapskate. The small cost of that cake made it all the better. Here are a couple of cake pics including the cutter doing a taste-test. And there are cake leftovers too. Guess we don't need to go anywhere else for food this weekend.


Since its the weekend we'll probably take it easy. Not entirely sure what we'll be doing but whatever it is, I'll be posting about it.


As always thanks for the morale support. God bless..


Steve