Day 13 – Friday, 25 December In our dreams, Christmas dawns still and clear, sunshine glinting off freshly fallen snow, reindeer tracks on the roofs of every small child. In Ukraine…not so much. We have figured out how Santa manages…he distributes his workload in Europe across the month of December, visiting Ukraine (and probably many other places) over New Year’s; he’s not due here for another week. He did a fly-by for us, though, and dropped off some warmer temperatures. As our translator left the apartment around 9:30, she winked and instructed me to look at the window—she thought she […]

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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 […]

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Day 15 – Sunday, 27 December Finally, a bright blue sky and sunshine bathed the courtyard behind our apartment! Neighborhood animals surveyed their territories, sniffing the trees, leaping from stairwell to windowsill. We went downstairs a couple minutes early to wait for our driver in the crisp air. I discussed world politics with a pretty healthy-looking stray cat who alternately rubbed against me, attacked my head, and then rubbed again…clearly, I had violated etiquette by failing to present an offering of tuna to the King of the Alley. We had been waiting about 15 minutes when Mark decided to call […]

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Day 16 – Monday, 28 December 5:50 AM: THUNK THUNK……THUNK THUNK THUNK…………..THUNK THUNK…..THUNK……rattle rattle……THUNK THUNK…..THUNKTHUNK! The neighbor apparently decided today was the ideal day to break through the concrete wall of his apartment with a sledgehammer to run a new electrical outlet or some other such nonsense. Yes, before 6 in the morning. Yes, it’s still dark out. This is crazy even by Ukrainian standards. I got back to sleep long enough to have some disturbing but now forgotten dream about operational process related to equipment delivery, and woke up in a cold sweat. Am I really hardwired to dream […]

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Day 17 – Tuesday, 29 December If a candlelight dinner is romantic, what do you call a shower by the flame of a tankless waterheater?? One thing that we had noticed this trip was the improved availability of public utilities…we hadn’t had a single power or water outage on this trip, except for on the train. Around 9:30, as I finished writing, Mark showered and shaved; as I opened the bathroom door and flipped on the light, the light flipped back off again. Checked the switch, it was on. Checked the next room, no light. On our very last day, […]

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