Tidbits of Living Day to Day in the Ukraine

Just waiting here in the apartment for our appointment at the Adoption Center. Will post tonight (Kyiv time) on how that appointment goes. If you have not checked in in the last 24 hours, see the prior entry from yesterday below.

We have been wanting to add a few bits of information on day to day general observations and how we get along here in the Ukraine.

Telephones: This is the most complex system we have experienced outside of Italy. As indicated in a prior blog, we are purchasing time for a mobile phone on loan from our coordinator. We have had to purchase two cards: One for local/Ukraine calls and one for international calls. We have to switch the card out in the phone and punch in the access code when we go from one to the other. There is also a land line in the apartment. Everyone here seems to carry three or more phones with them. It is crazy. To make it more complicated, cell phones can call cell phones as well as land lines. Land lines can only call land lines. Land lines are free locally. Cell phones can receive calls for free, but it costs money to make a call from your cell phone. Therefore you see people having extremely quick conversations with no pleasantries when making calls from their cell phones. If they receive a call they are very chatty, it's free. The cell phone business is totally different in the US. We sign a contract with a carrier, receive a phone specific to them and pay them monthly after being billed. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, you buy a phone and then buy prepaid cards to put into the phone. All phones work with all companies/cards. It's pay as you go. This is the reason we have so few choices in phones compared to what we see over here. Stores here are crammed to the rafters with every conceivable shape, color and size of phone.

Laundry: Originally, we were sending our laundry out with a person for about $10 a pop. Very cheap, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. We would get the cloths back and they would look and smell like they had been washed in the Dnipro river on a stone and hung up to dry. Stiff, smelly and if there was a stain it was still there. We now hand wash everything ourselves in the sink, wring them out, role them in a towel, step on them and hang them around the apartment to dry. They do not smell and they look clean. A box of Tide costs about 65 cents. It gives us something normal to do as well... therapeutic.

Music: The most annoying element we have to deal with is loud EuroPop. Think Rave Dance Music. This is played in every restaurant, coffee house, bus, on the street, etc. It does not matter the venue or the time of day, the pounding, driving beat of EuroPop everywhere, 24/7.

Trash: Littering is an art form in the Ukraine. Food litter is taken care of by birds and stray dogs, but the paper, cigarette butts, glass and bottles seem to not make it into the trash receptacles. These trash receptacles are everywhere, but it must be simpler to simply throw it on the ground. The good news here is that the labor to clean up this mess is cheap and they are always cleaning up the streets in the main area of town. Another interesting phenomenon is the commonly burning trash can. For those people here who do throw away their butts, they seem to forget to put them out. The trash cans smolder as the refuse catches fire and the damp contents do not completely cumbust. Outside of the city center, trash is everywhere and must not ever be cleaned up.

More Food News: We have become braver and have been sampling food that can be commonly found in booths along the streets. We thought we'd take the risk since everyone seems to eat this stuff. So far so good. We have not had to break out our emergency gastrointestinal kit (Imodium and compozine). This type of food has been a very pleasant surprise. It is usually a baked pocket with meat or cheese or something sweet inside. There are also "wraps" that look like tortillas with cabbage/cole slaw and meat. All this stuff has been yummy. At the bus station in Uman on Monday morning we watched a woman with a cardboard box sell hundreds (not an exaggeration) of these pockets to people. It almost seemed like a part of everyone's routine to buy one of these from this woman. We got up the courage to go get one and try it. It was a bread pocket that was stuffed with cooked cabbage and then deep fried. Right out of the Minnesota State Fair with a Ukrainian twist. Scott has his cholesterol medicine, but we would not make a habit out of this. It was absolutely wonderful!

Transportation: We continue to learn to be proficient at public transport. It is very convenient with lots of buses and trains. The cost to ride the bus or train is 10 cents a ride. Everyone here rides public transport so whatever they loose on having low prices, they must make up in volume. You have to be able to decode the language, because all signs are in cerulean, but you commit the writing to memory and it starts to become easy to follow the signs. Even when we traveled to Uman on a bus and had to figure out how to get home, we were able to simply hop on a bus with "Kyiv" in the window and we ended up at the central bus station in three hours. There is also a wide variety of buses that include everything from a modern "hinged" bus on the heavily traveled lines, to electric trams, to "normal" looking buses, to small vans for very local or low volume routs. We have only taken one taxi during our visit but will not do it again. At 27 Hrvna it was too "expensive" by Ukrainian standards. Our coordinator seems to be getting a kick out of seeing us figuring all of this out, but still worries about us all the time and makes us call her when we are back from our excursions.

Our next blog will be the update from our appointment! We will post that tonight (Kyiv time).