Sleepy Saturday

Day 14 – Saturday, 26 December

Call us boring, but we just didn’t do that much today. The weather was awful; cold and rainy and gloomy. We went to the orphanage at about 10:40 and had a good visit with Lena. We gave her the DVD copy of New Moon and then played games—Uno is a big favorite, and we also played several rounds of Set, with Lena trouncing us each time.

After our visit, we returned to our apartment, grabbed a bit of lunch. Our driver returned around 2:30 to take us to the “upscale” mall in town. We are still amazed by the contrasts; in a town where the average income is well under $500 US per month, we see women dressed amazingly well in fur coats and hats, high heeled boots, and fashionable handbags. Yet the prices on these items at the mall are beyond even what I would be willing to pay…I saw a cute gray sweater on a mannequin and peeked at the price tag: 1,500 hrivna, or almost $200 US. ACK! Now, the prices at the other mall were a little bit lower, but I’ve been looking for a knit hat and can’t seem to find one for under $20. Where’s Wal-Mart when you need it??

We browsed the mall for about an hour, found the free wi-fi spot that the other family told us about, checked headlines and learned of the foiled terrorist attempt on the same route we will be flying on Thursday (Amsterdam to Detroit). Now there’s no way we can slip through even the small vodka bottles in our carryons…We’ll be watching the news a little more closely now to see if we need to change our packing strategy!

We stopped into an adjacent grocery store, picked up some Coke and a bottle of water, and then met our driver in front of the giant Santa outside the mall for a ride back home through the cold rain. Back home, we snacked and watched a couple of movies, and then headed for bed.