Random stuff

We are loving Micah's city and country! There is so much to see and do. Here are some pictures of the outside of our apartment as we waited for Eugene to pick us up for our city tour. Nothing exciting, but this is how most of the apartments look from the outside. Once you walk in, you go up two flights of stairs to our apartment on the 3rd floor, which is also number 13. I thought, well maybe it's not bad luck here, but was later told it is... so funny we got building AND apartment 13. But I'm not superstitious since we know the Lord is with us all the time, so it's okay.

On the way to our stop, we passed the Opera house... I really would love to get in there and see a performance while we're here.

Here is a beautiful picture of St. Andrew's Cathedral right next to the adoption office. The buildings here are so amazing.

Our driver, Eugene, took us to the souvenier vendors and got us hooked up with a couple of English-speaking guys who helped us buy some cool stuff (see below for the authentic costume we bought for Micah for only 100 UAH!) The rest will have to wait until we give them out :-)

Eugene showed us a cute little Russian restaurant where we could order Varenyky (an authentic Ukrainian dish). Here we are upstairs. It was very lavishly decorated and had animal furs on all the seats. The sweet waitress put one of them on the floor for Annie to play, but she wasn't much into playing at all yesterday. Jet lag really set in on her and she was mostly a zombie all day. Last night we slept a better night shift and so far she is napping good today. Hopefully this afternoon she will be back to her normal self. Do you see the face on the wall in the 2nd photo below? (p.s. the waiter next to it speaks REALLY good English!)

Our check came in this cute little shoe! We really found this place fun and interesting.

While Eugene helped get another RR family home from the SDA, we walked around site-seeing and came upon St. Sophia's Cathedral (1500 years old!) Annie wanted to get down and chase the pigeons around :)

Here is a statue next to St. Sophia's, of Bohdan Khmelnytsky on his horse.

St. Michael's Cathedral (2000 years old!)

We found a park next to St. Michael's and tried to get Annie to swing a bit. She was not really having it. I put her on backwards so she'd have something to hang onto... the swings here are much different than back home.

The angels and arches in Independence Square. These two monuments elevate two of the city protectors; the historic protector of Kiev - Michael the Archangel atop a reconstruction of one of the old city's gates ---- and a modern invention, the goddess-protector Berehynia on top of the tall column.

After shopping in an underground market, we came home and I made some yummy spaghetti. This is how the sauces come here, in packets! Soooo different, but very yummy! We'll do the city tour another day -- Annie was so tired and it was getting late.

Here is Micah's costume we got at the souvenier shop, along with his country's flag. We loving collecting these little things for him to have.