Sofievska Park - Uman

Day 3 of the 4 day weekend we went on a tour of the beautiful Sofievska Park, about two hours south of Kyiv, in a town called Uman, which is also well known for being the birthplace of a certain strain of Orthodox Judaism. The park was created on the basis of a particular horticultural style where manmade gardens are specifically designed to appear natural. The guide explained in detail how certain rock formations were meant to symbolize certain great literary works, like Homer's the Odyssey, or the formation of Greek isles.

The thrust of the park is that the owner, Count Potocki, fell in love with a Greek slave girl, married her and built her this enormous park in 1802 as a wedding gift. It is really lovely and surprisingly well-maintained. I've linked the wikipedia article to the title for more information.

After we finished the tour, we sat on the slope near the main house to have a picnic. There were about 50 people spread across the lawn. But as we finished, a very cranky guard came over and yelled at us - apparently we weren't allowed to picnic on the lawn. We feigned ignorance of Russian, but since we were done anyway we left shortly thereafter. I didn't envy him his job - there were no signs, it was a beautiful day and the lawn was around 2 acres of clear space. Perfect for a picnic!
And in this post we have the fantastic Aaron-as-post-Soviet-posing-woman photo, where he is standing in a burnt-out tree. We were a bit giddy and silly!

May Holidays - Botanical Garden

May is the best month in Ukraine, since we have 5 holidays, and they all fall on Monday or Tuesday. I think we end up working one full five-day week. June also has two Monday holidays this year, but that's an anomaly.

So on the first long weekend, a celebration of May days from May 1-4, we went to the Botanical Garden here. Apparently, so did half of Kyiv as you can see from the photos. And the gorgeous, stately grand staircase was a total pain with a stroller, but we muddled through. There aren't too many photos of the actual flowers, since there really weren't that many of great note. And of course our darling oldest daughter is vehemently against posing properly in any photo, so here are the best options with mommy and daddy. She actually was happy, it's just hard to tell!

You'll see in one photo the crowds gathered around the magnolias, but if you've lived in Virginia, it's not as exciting. We were limited in our travel again, since there were lots of big down and up hills and little signs threatening ticks and bugs. We stuck to the path. Aaron took an artistic shot of people climbing a hill and you can see the church and statue of Mother Kyiv in the background. It was quite a hot day, so we had to stop and have ice cream, which was nice but there wasn't anywhere to sit other than on the garden, and we felt odd doing that.

What you can't see in the photos is a phenomonon familiar to those who have lived in the former Soviet Union - the floral cheesecake pose. That's where a woman or child stands pretty uch directly in a tree or in a flower bed and pulls a plant near their face and snaps a photo. It's very mid-80s, soft fade artistic. You'll see an example modeled by Aaron in the next set of photos - he is taking the mickey out of the Ukrainians.

Dressin' Up and Goin' Out - Kiwi Style

S has entered a phase where she has begun to explore dressing herself, often with amusing results. Here she models the artistic exploits of her GranDora, who made both the hat and the scarf. If Mom ever goes public, I think we've found her model!

April 24 we celebrated Earth Day - we didn't actually volunteer to help clean up Marinskii Park, since we were a bit burdened with kids, but we did have a nice walk through the park that day. April 25 is ANZAC Day - a celebration of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. Here in Ukraine I think about 80% of the whole Aussie-Kiwi community got together, supported by some Americans and Brits. So maybe 20 people in all...

Here our oldest daughter demonstrates her cricket skills (top above). And Daddy demonstrates his center-of-attention skills as he regales the lads with stories of wicked googlys while cradling the baby (above). You'll also notice that despite the fact that it is late in April in these photos, she is in a snowsuit. And I put her in it, not the nanny. It really takes a while to warm up here. As an aside, this is when people actually start to feel the bite of post-winter depression, although it is alleviated by the incredible amount of sun that we get here - as I write this in late May, the sun is up at 4 AM, and goes down at 10 PM.

Cousins, Cousins Everywhere!

As you may or may not know upon moving to Kyiv Cousin Mary Marr revealed to my mother that I actually have a cousin living in Kyiv. What a crazy coincidence! Cameron is around my age, and we share a grandparent (for her - it's a great-grandparent for me) so we are somewhere around 1st cousins 2 1/2 times removed. Little G and Max are actually a generation apart, even though there is only two months difference. But rather than dwell on that, we have been thrilled to find out that both of our families get along quite well. Cameron's husband Robert works for Winner Automotive, and he and Aaron have had some fun going out on the town, as their pregnant wives stayed home (hee, hee!)

Cameron's sister came to visit, so these are photos of lots and lots of cousins.

We Know How To Party Even More

This is the second party that day, which was a 6th birthday for new big brother Cousin William. As you can see, someone is the center of attention, as usual. Also one of the youngest in attendance, but she held her own in the cake-eating portion of the event. And the bigger girls love to "babysit" both the girls, for better or worse.And here is the debut of super-cute Cousin Maksym Kulewicz. Born February 3 in Kyiv. You'll see more of him later, but he is a fun playgroup companion for the girls.And this is not exactly a picture of the dress, but it is a photo of Ronnie (father of 3 girls, one boy, the youngest of whom is William's best bud) reliving his bounce and rock days. Notice his wife is not joining him enthusiastically with the baby - I think 4 kids is enough for her!

We know how to party

I know I'm going out of order, but here are some pictures from mid-March. First up is Miss G in her snowsuit, and hat, and 47 other layers. Trust me when I say there is a baby in there! Which you can see from the second photo where, like an onion, we peel back the layers.

The All Blacks photo is a nice family portrait from another event we went to - everyone is representing their Kiwi heritage, except for the photographer, who is a Kiwi-in-spirit only.
The rest of the series is from a birthday party for our friend's 2 year old. We had the girls all dressed up. Miss G was wearing the blue dress that S wore when she met Nana Mayhew 2 years ago. I don't have a great photo of it here, since she decided to take a nap in the middle of the party and the dress is covered. Don't worry, though, we went to a SECOND birthday party that day (for our cousin) and there are some dress pics there. What you can't see in this photo is that the crib is right next to a playroom with 20 kids in it. It always amazes me how kids can sleep through anything...

We have such an active social life, you have no idea. It's one Cars-jungle-Dora-themed party after another. The circuit is grueling, you know, as evidenced by the photo below. But we soldier through life, one cupcake at a time.

Swim Fishies!

As promised, here are photos of our Saturday morning outings to "Nemo" which is located in the local polyclinic around the corner- here's the pool, which is a maximum of 4 ft deep. The man who runs it is very nice, and even offered to take photos of S and I swimming, but since my new, stylish suit hadn't arrived, I thought I would spare you all. These aren't really "classes" since the theory here is that you can't teach kids per se until they are 4. However, the instructor provides individual suggestions, and it seems to work pretty well (especially for $6 an hour versus the swanky "classes" that are $30/hour and you aren't even allowed in the pool area with your child if you're not a "member" of the elite hotel pool organization.) We go with our friends, who have a 3 and a 2 year old. We practice bubbles and chase down toys, and do it all in a mix of Russian and English. There is a baby there who is 3 months old, so little G should be starting soon. However, we are delayed in that since neither Aaron nor the baby have their "spravki." This is a requirement of all pools I've ever been to in the former Soviet Union. It is a medical certificate that states that you don't have some terrible communicable disease that you could spread through pool water - like leprosy? I don't know. My only issue with the process is that you do it once - what if you catch some funky disease 6 months later? No protection for the rest of us in the pool. Oh, and swim caps are necessary - choice of cat or fish - we went with red cat, which I think is quite striking.

And here is our fearless swimmer, ready to tackle the pool - swim cap? Check. Strawberry swimsuit? Check. Uncle Ellis and Paul-provided shoes, since the floor has hot-water pipes underneath and is about 1,000 degrees? Check. Interest in going out in the pool beyond the steps? Not as much... There's always next time!

Krakow Scenes

We obviously saw a lot of beautiful architecture, judging by how long it's taking to upload everything here! To tell you the truth, we had ambitious plans to do everything that Aaron did on his "honeymoon" here in 2006 with his friend Mark, but the salt mine, for example, involves walking down 35 flights of steps... before the tour starts. I didn't think the toddler/infant combo was going to do that.

But it was nice to go to the mall, get M a haircut, just walk around the city. We don't do it much in Kyiv, since we're not really in the best walking district. And S loved all of the attention. So we went to a foreign country to do a lot of things we could do here, except that there was in the EU, so it was a little bit cleaner, a little more orderly and a little newer - and possibly a little less corrupt!















It was Victory Day (maybe not for the Poles, who then entered decades of Soviet rule) on May 9, May 8 in Poland, and being the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII it was a big deal in Ukraine. A little bit of a deal in Krakow, hence the banners.

Walking in Krakow

Krakow! Holy Cow!

We took a weekend jaunt across the border to Krakow, thanks to low-cost airline WizzAir. Buying tickets was a bit of a drama, as a bank request from Ukraine (land of cyber crime) triggers your credit card's fraud department. And when I called to unblock the cards, it turned out that someone had actually hacked one of our Visa cards! Now what kind of stupid criminal steals a card number to sign up for Chemistry.com? Where you have to enter personal information. I mean, really.

Anyway, we can fly to Kratowice airport, which is about an hour and a half by car from Krakow proper. We rented an apartment in the Jewish district - a really nice location and once again it proved that VRBO.com is a great website. For $100 a night - the same as a hotel - we got a kitchen and the care of the apartment owner's parents! You can see the apartment in the photos - the big comfy beds. And they had internet, so a certain teenager was pleased.

The city looked a lot like our trip to Lviv - which was only about 100 miles west, but a world away. As M said - this is a real country, they have more than one chain restaurant. So yes, mom, we did eat at KFC and even bought Subway sandwiches for the flight home on Monday night. Things you wouldn't think twice about at home are a real treat abroad.

Krakow is centered around the Stare Misto - the old city. We stayed just outside, but to walk end to end takes about 45 minutes, so we saw quite a lot. I'll talk about the trip to Auschwitz separately, but we spent a lot of time on the main square by the Cloth Hall. We saw Wawel Castle - where the Polish President who was killed in the tragic plane crash last month was just buried. Due to an oversight by our tour guide (me) the Royal Tombs were closed when we went on Monday. But we saw the main building, and it was sunny and warm.

The photos to the left at the Main Square.

In fact, we missed a lot on the trip, I was tired and it's hard to travel with 3 kids, especially when they don't have set schedules. I was very grumpy when I had to nurse while actually walking the streets of a strange city. And it did rain on and off most of the time, but I was actually smart enough to bring raincoats for everyone and an umbrella, and we bought another when we were there - as I was buying it an older Polish man came up and said something we didn't understand, but I did get the words girl and healthy, so I think he approved of us protecting the kids from the evil cold-inducing rain.

Girls will be girls

Despite my best endeavors, we have begun the Princess phase. OK, I am partly to blame, but only because I have had to explain who the Princesses were on the gifts from friends and relatives. But she has no idea of the story of Cinderella, and doesn't really seem to have a lot of context for royalty in general. Every time she sees a bride - and that happens a lot here on weekends - she points out the princess, so I think, as it should be in all things, that it's...

all about the dress

And here is her little sister, looking on in either admiration or disbelief at big sis' fantastic full-on Cinderella styling. Don't you worry, little one, they're called hand-me-downs!

What do you do with kids in Kyiv?

I'm glad you asked me that question. This place has a booming social life for the wee set. (Not so much for the teens. As you saw from recent posts, M chose to stay home and play video games rather than come to Odesa. We figure he's old enough,and there isn't anything for him to do in terms of getting in trouble. Our biggest fear was that he'd starve to death, but since we were only gone two days....)

Anyway, back to the toddler scene. Here is one example - the culinary stylings of our neighbor's birthday party for the 2 year old - "Circus and Cocktails" theme. The mom is 7 months pregnant (another girl, just like us) and somehow she managed to do all of this. I reassure my ego with the fact that she doesn't work. (You'll see the little girl in the bouncy castle down below.) To this day, S asks me if I'll make her a tiger cupcake. Good luck with that, kid. Maybe I should be devious and tell her that Aunty Lisa will make her tiger cupcakes - after all, she's the crafty one. (Sorry, Lisa!)

We went to lunch with some other families, and the restaurant had a full-blown play area out back. Pirate ship, sheep and horses, and while we were eating they set up a bouncy castle. S loved it! We have video of her laughing so hard she can barely breathe.

On an interesting side note, we left that party to have dinner with a friend of Aaron's who works for the Finnish Embassy. We all (including S) had our first taste of reindeer, and we all loved it. Who knew the little one would enjoy reindeer and ligonberry sauce. Thank heavens she's not old enough to make the connection to Santa's helpers...

Belhorod-Dnistrovsky Castle

One of the more "famous" sights near Odesa is the Belhorod-Dnistrovsky castle complex. With ruins that date back to at least the 9th century, it is a true architectural monument. In true local fashion, however, nothing is cordoned off and you can climb all over it. (In fairness much of it was renovated in the 80s and 90s so you're not actually climbing on the oldest portions. And the photo above is of the excavated 9th century ruins, which are still under active investigation. We climbed on the stuff inside the castle.) And so here we are, climbing all over it. Aaron got a lot of funny looks - first they don't use the Baby Bjorn method a lot and second, he's scaling the walls with a newborn. But we're used to being the topic of discussion. An unfortunate side effect of this trip was that for two weeks S would repeat "Someone pee-peed on the castle." This was true - she was poking around in the dungeon areas, yelling "Hello! I'm S!" and we told her not to touch a wall where someone had, well, not made it to the toilet.

Getting there has half the fun, as we often like to tease the GPS by trying tofind things near major tourist sights, largely since the damn thing doesn't actually have the site itself programmed in. (Don't get me started!) So we took this little spit of Soviet-constructed land across a giant harbor, through crumbling infrastucture intermixed with nouveau-riche mansions stlye homes, across an old railroad bridge, and into the thriving metropolis of Belhorod-Dnistrovsky. After teaching the kids some new swear words, we navigated the bomb-like potholes and asked some people at a bus station for directions to their castle. (I assumed they only had one.) So, marital crisis averted, we got to the castle, bought a painting, got to see the costumes and "armory" - for around $2 they let you shoot a crossbow or shoot the cannon. Aaron wanted to shoot the cannon until we realized that it was somehow electric and didn't really shoot a cannonball. Oh, well, I'm sure there's someplace here that let's you shoot off live rounds, we just have to keep looking!

So, getting home was the other half of the fun, since the old railroad bridge that we crossed on the way there was raised for a barge on the way back. The line of cars erupted into an impromptu dance party when the drunken folks 4 cars ahead got out and turned up the radio. I just enjoyed the chance to feed the baby, change diapers and run the kids out some more. You have to look on the bright side, right?

Odesa pt 2 - Easter!

Our weekend in Odesa was actually both Orthodox and "Western" Easter, which occur on the same day every few years. So Sunday, although we didn't go to church, we did have an obligatory egg hunt. I put about 5 jellybeans into around 6 eggs, and the rest were empty. Hid them in our little two room apartment and had S search for them. The look on her face when she shook one and realized there were "lollies??" inside was priceless. She had the same look of excitement and surprise all day whenever she shook one, which she did a lot since she was shaking herself from all of the sugar! I tried to get a good photo of the whole group but the basket was in the way. Suffice it to say that I tried - I put G in a bonnet, all the girls wore dresses or skirts, and we went out to brunch.

Little G - not so into the plastic egg hunt concept.

S looks very mature here ordering brunch at the outdoor cafe. This is Deribasovskaya Street, the main walking street. As you can see, at 10 AM on Easter morning, not so many folks. Oh, and it was the night that the time changed, so for many it probably felt like 9 AM on a Sunday, so that's why the rest of Odesa wasn't out - too hungover.

Vegetarians beware! Here are Aaron and S in front of the steak sculpture. I guess you can choose your own cut of beef, or identify its orgins? Despite being a vegetarian myself at one point, it was never out of pity for the cow, so I didn't mind when we ate at "Steakhouse" that night - the beef was exceptional!