KIEV - We've Arrived!

We made it! :-) YIPPIE!

I was unable to sleep on the planes and was quite sick to my stomach most of the trip, despite the fact that I took dramamine for both legs o

f the flight. So, if there are typos or things that don't make sense in this blog post, I apologize in advance!

This is a view of the city from our apartment - which by the way is definitely TOP NOTCH!

No trouble or issues to speak of with luggage or airplanes. The security line at Dulles was short and a piece of cake. The security line getting out of Germany was short but TOOK FOREVER!

In Germany it was lightly snowing and they had to de-ice so we were delayed about 20 minutes. The airport in Frankfurt had almost all the signs in both English and Germany and all the announcements over the PA system were spoken in German and then translated into English and then into Russian!

The facilitator her is GREAT! She showed us our apartment and around the shopping area near by and down into the underground mall - Independence Square. There is a giant Christmas tree that is in the middle of the square and is supposed to be being decorated soon and she thinks they are putting in an ice skating rink! Watch our blog for photos of that! :-) It's been almost a year since I've been on the ice, so it should be interesting to see how long it takes me to get my footing again! Brian won't skate - I wish I had Ashley here ... she's love to skate with me! :)

So, we had dinner at what appeared to be an Italian restaurant, but it definitely had Ukrainian food, too. We shared a bowl of borscht and had some yummy cheese bread, and sampled a few things that other than fish we had no idea what to expect! It was cafeteria style, so we could just point at things and they would give them to us. Still, it's often hard to tell if you're going to get chicken, pork, beef, just plain pasta, or "mystery meat."

The honking from cars downtown is horrible! The driver we had was very friendly and easy to talk to - self taught English speaker. He only honked at one other driver, but so many driver just honk and honk and honk ... over and over again ... of course we have no idea why, but it is going to be quite distracting for our sleep tonight! :( I'm guessing we'll be getting some ear plugs tomorrow!

We have to wait until 10pm our time to skype with the kids when they get home from school. I haven't slept since 10pm two nights ago, so I won't be making it up 2 more hours at this point! Be posting again soon!