Ukraine Experience 2014: Part 1

As I said in a previous post, Uncle Bex and I went to Ukraine for a little over two weeks.  Despite all the recent press that they have been getting about wars and fighting and shooting down passenger airlines in that country, for us it was a very enjoyable, calm, and safe experience.  However, we maybe saw a side of Ukraine that not many tourists get to see.  And we steered clear of the oblasts Donetsk and Luhansk where most of the fighting is happening.

I started to write about the Ukraine experience all in one post, but then I realized I was either going to have to cut out a lot of details, or else I was going to have to do this in installments to do things justice.  I chose installments, for better or worse.  It depends on if you like the reading as much as I like the telling.

It's hard to know where to start and how to tell about this vacation.  Last fall Bex had been invited to go there by her friend Kay, and then Bex asked me if I wanted to tag along.  Since my friend Charlie lives in Ukraine and I'm usually up for a travel adventure, I said, "Sure."  We booked our plane tickets in January, right before the trouble, rioting, and fighting started in earnest.  After the fighting started, we decided to wait and see what would happen by June/July.  I kept in touch with Charlie occasionally, and it seemed like the trip would probably still be possible.  So we trusted the advice of our friends living there, and we trusted in someone even greater and decided to go.

I wasn't feeling nervous about the trip at all until about a week before we left when people at work started very earnestly wishing me safe travels, etc.  Then I started to get a bit nervous because they seemed so concerned.  Both Bex and I weren't really sure what we were feeling as we headed to the airport in Chicago, but we were committed, so we pressed on.  And once we landed and got to our hotel in Kiev, pretty much all the nerves were gone (for me anyway - not sure about Bex).  It was shaping up to be some good days.

Flat MelBMarvis poked her head out of the luggage during our layover in Zurich on the way there.

It wasn't going to be a good trip only because this was in the vending machine in Zurich.  ;-)

One of our first views of Kiev as we rode in a taxi from the airport to downtown.

Of course all my readers are well-versed in geography, but just in case there are some "wanderers" on the web who are not, here is the general location of Ukraine shown in the picture below.  It's in eastern Europe.  The light green is the current disputed area of Crimea.  If you want more of a general overview, Wikipedia can give you a few more details.  And for a little more context, the large country to the north and east of Ukraine is Russia.  If we go counter-clockwise from there and list the countries that border Ukraine, you then have Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova.

Your frame of reference.

The major highlights of the trip, kinda-sorta in chronological order (not necessarily in order of importance) are detailed as follows, in the form of several installments.

The view from our hotel room in Kiev.

1. Kiev sightseeing.  We didn't see a ton of Kiev - only a day's worth or so.  But we saw a few of the must-see places.  St. Sophia's cathedral, St. Michael's monastery, and Pecherska Lavra.

St. Sophia's cathedral started to be built in the early 1000's (that's more than 1000  years ago).  It has fallen into disrepair and nearly been destroyed several times and is partially rebuilt - we did go into the church to check out the famous old mosaics there.  And we paid the fee to go up in the bell tower.

The bell tower from the outside.  In the lower right, also note the large painted egg.  That's a historic Ukrainian craft from what I understand (to make hand-painted eggs).

St. Sophia's Cathedral

The staircase to go up in the bell tower.  Yep, we climbed it.

Looking up into the bell tower. Because this kind of picture just makes an engineer's heart sing.

Panoramic view of Kiev from St. Sophia's bell tower.

We did not enter St. Michael's.  We took a few pictures of the outside and checked out some tire piles, flags, and tents that some protesters left nearby (no active protesting was happening at the time).  St. Michael's comes from around the same era as St. Sophia's, but the Russians destroyed it in the 1900's.  However, it was rebuilt in the 1990's.

The square by St. Sophia's and looking down the road at St. Michael's.

St. Michael's Monastery / Cathedral

Uncle Bex by the protester stuff near St. Michael's.

And then there is the Pecherska Lavra, which is another super-old church monastery that was originally in caves.  Now they have quite a bit of above-ground stuff too.  Charlie took us into one of the churches in the large complex there.  We observed part of a service/baptism they appeared to be having because it was a  holiday.  Interesting and very foreign.  And, we took a walk through the caves where some saints' remains are, and people stop to kiss the coffins and do some worship.  People carry candles, your head and shoulders must be covered, and the passages are very narrow.  Picture a fire marshall's worst nightmare.  Charlie said it's even more of a nightmare in the winter when everyone wears their fur coat into the caves while holding their candles.

Entrance gate to Pecherska Lavra

With our head gear on and ready to go into the caves.  Well, almost.  Uncle Bex needed to still get something to cover her shoulders.  *gasp*

And!  The Lavra complex contains a museum of tiny things.  Everything you look at must be looked at through a microscope.  It contained such things as a carved chess set that fit on the head of a pin.  And a flea with golden shoes.  We also had the opportunity to briefly see the apartment of a native Ukrainian.  And we walked along the bluff above the Dnipro (said nee-pro) River.  That's probably enough about Kiev for now, huh?

More of Kiev including the Motherland statue.

Looking east (I think) toward the part of Kiev on the other side of the Dnipro river.

More installments coming soon!

Airing The Laundry

You may have noticed a lapse in posting.  This was due to a 2.5 week trip that Uncle Bex and I took to Ukraine.  More on that in a later post.

While we were in Ukraine we did a lot of laundry, and dryers aren't all the rage there, so we used the clothes line.  I was quite inexperienced with using a clothes line.  I'm not exactly sure why, but Mom didn't use the line all that much.  Maybe because she had a drying rod inside the house, and maybe because the clothesline had been hit with the mower one too many times and was kind of dilapidated.

Anyway, the point is that I had a lot to learn.  So Uncle Bex taught me the Mother Mary Clothesline Commandments.  They are as follows:

1. Thou shalt clean the line first.
2. Thou shalt not leave pins on the line (it makes them less robust due to weather element exposure).
3. Thou shalt only hang sheets across the line folded in half.  All other things should not be folded in that manner in order to aid in quicker drying.  Sheets are allowed to do this because otherwise they tend to drag on the ground or break free of their clothes pins.
4. Thou shalt hang shirts from the bottom hem, not the shoulders.  This prevents "tabs" on the shoulders.
5. Thou shalt fold T-shirt hems over the line slightly to prevent misshaping the hems.
6. When possible, thou shalt put the space of one line between clothes for faster drying.
7. Thou shalt put undergarments between two rows of clothes to "shield" them from prying eyes.
8. Thou shalt hang "nice" things inside out to prevent fading.
9. Thou shalt turn button-down shirts inside out, button the top button, and hang them from the hem with 3 pins - one on each side seam plus one in the middle on the row of buttons.
10. Thou shalt remove dry items in order by person such that each person's clothes are grouped together.

I wasn't able to follow these perfectly, but I did use them as a guideline.  I found a couple "challenge" articles of clothing that didn't fit nicely into these rules.  One was a pair of skorts (because turning them inside out left the skirt material all bunched), and the other was a reversible skirt (I couldn't tell which side was the inside and which was the outside).

Also, did you know that vinegar can be used as a fabric softener?

2014 Bushel Basket List, Weeks 25 & 26

Checked off the list:  #5 - Go to a convention I've never been to before.  If you want the details, ask me in person some time.  I would be quite happy to tell you all about it.

2014 Bushel Basket List, Weeks 23 & 24

Checked off the list:  #17 - See a musical.  I saw the musical "Honk" based on "The Ugly Duckling" on June 23, 2014.  It was even semi-outdoors, which is a bonus.

Brief Update

Summer is in full swing - beach volleyball, softball, graduation celebrations, riding my bicycle, etc.  I even got to play some "sandlot" softball (on grass) on Saturday.  I haven't done that in probably close to 20 years.  It reminded me of being a kid.  Using pieces of garbage for bases, no backstop, discussing whether to play work-up or form two teams, and just having fun by batting through the order every inning regardless of outs and strikes.  And I was playing mostly with kids.....at least they seem like kids to me now because I'm getting all old and stuff.  But sometimes teenagers and early twenties people are fun.

I think I get my writing tendencies from my dad.  My parents have been on an overseas trip recently, and his daily account that he has been sending is quite entertaining.  And sometimes I can almost hear echoes of myself.

You may have noticed that I'm falling a bit behind in the bucket list.  Don't worry, I have plans to get back on track.  And I almost completed one item - all that is lacking are the wheels to make the thing portable.  So I need to bite the bullet and spend a lunch hour going out and purchasing them.

There was an interruption in postings because of an interruption in internet service (again) at my house.  AT&T and I have a bit of a feud going.  It may be that the feud is one-sided.  It's a matter of principle after a while even though the dollar amount being disputed is less than $50.  But....yesterday I called and talked to them twice with not good results (one bad transfer between departments, and one time I ran out of time).  Today I spent two hours (yes, hours) mostly on hold with them.  Good thing I have a hands-free headset at work.  They gave me the run-around about who could or could not remove some unjust charges from my bill.

First I talked to Billing.  They said Collections needed to do it and gave me a number to call.  I tried to call the number, but the line was busy (they didn't even put me on hold).  So I got back in the customer service queue, which gets very lengthy after 9:00 AM, FYI.  This time I did talk to Collections, but Collections said Billing needed to remove the charges.  So I talked to Billing, and they put me on hold while they talked to someone else.  Eventually Billing transferred me to Accounts Receivable, where I sat on hold again.  Accounts Receivable talked to me, and they put me on hold while they "researched my account."  Finally they came back on the line and said everything was good.  Unjust charges removed, and internet restored allegedly with no charges.  I won't find out for sure until I get my next bill.  Whew!  Nothing like sitting on hold the first two hours of your day to kind of sour your mood.

What really annoys me is that before they put you on hold you have to type in your account number, but then as soon as you talk to a "real" person, they ask you again for the account number as if they don't have some kind of indication on their screen about what account number you want to discuss.  If they don't know, why do they bother asking me to put my account number in?  And THEN, they also act as if they have no notes on file about any of your previous calls.  Sometimes if you press them to actually go read the notes, occasionally they are capable of finding previous notes, but not always.  If you don't have AT&T, I recommend that you don't start.

I need some help with bug identification.  See the photo below.  In the last two years I've found one of these per year in my basement.  Both times in some kind of white plastic container with steep sides.  They can move/jump very quickly but can't scale or fly out of a bucket with slippery slides.  They can tend to get stuck on their backs with their legs waving around.  And they are kind of iridescent/shiny and have a crunchy shell (at least it sounds crunch when I squish them).  Any thoughts?  They are maybe about 1 to 1.5 inches in length (not counting the legs or antennae).  Definitely bigger than a cricket, probably as long or longer than a grasshopper, but wider than a grasshopper.

Mystery Bug - Can you identify it?

I saw this on facebook the other day.  I have no idea if it's scientifically proven, but it sounds good and self-validates me, so I like it.  :-)
 

Kayak Cheesin'

Uncle Bex and I have a kayak goal.  Eventually we want to kayak the entire Rock River Trail from east-central Wisconsin all the way to the Mississippi River.  Not necessarily consecutively.  We already have 12 miles in.

We invited Jax, Jenx, and Shax to join us the first weekend in May.  We kinda-sorta invited ourselves to the house of Shax for the weekend.  Other highlights:

1. The kayak trip involved an unplanned portage.  That's when you know you're hard care.
2. The weather was like Goldilocks likes it - not too hot, not too cold, sunny, and not very many bugs.
3. We saw some interesting paddlers including a lady with a camera dressed all in camouflage gear.
4. Delicious paddling snacks/lunch along the river.  Sammiches, organic chips, veggies, trail mix, fruit,  etc.
5. I was hoping for a smack-down between Shax and Bex about who sells the best essential oils, but no luck on that.
6. Sleep was not real plentiful because of work stress and sharing a room with lots of other people, but that's OK since the fellowship was good.  Not to self:  Do not wait until 4:00 AM to take diphenhydramine to help with allergies and sleep.  Grogginess in the morning will ensue.
7. Homemade bread by Shax - delicious!
8. The Daddy of Shax keeps some bees, so he showed us his hives and told us a bunch of stuff about bees.  Super fascinating.  Like how the bees know when the hive is big enough to split, and then how they go about choosing a new queen.  Did you know when they split the hive that the old queen goes and finds a new home and leaves the old hive for the new queen that the hive is going to raise?  Did you know they feed the new queen royal jelly while it matures?  And, did you know that the queen can decide whether she wants to lay male or female eggs?  He told us a bunch of other cool stuff that I don't have the time or memory to write here.
9. Special GM - not because of any particular person being there, but just because it felt like they were talking right to me.  It's that way sometimes, isn't it?  That you get some very good messages from God when you don't really know anyone at a GM.
10. Beets on salad - not something I normally do for myself, but they taste kind of good.  They can also be a bit disturbing a day or so later on the other end.  Just sayin'.

A few pictures of supporting evidence follow.

Doing the unplanned portage.  The giant tree obstacle can be seen in the background.

The river part of the paddle

The Horicon Marsh part of the paddle.

Three beehives.

See the bee circled in the middle?  See the yellow saddlebags he's carrying?  I was told that is bee bread that he's carrying around for a special occasion when they need some bee bread in the hive.

One can see where the expressions "busy as a bee" and "a bee hive of activity" came from.

A different style of hive.

A rainbow on the drive home.

Iowa Spring

This is kind of old news, but the first weekend of April I drove over to the corny state to hang out with Uncle Bex.  It was a low stress weekend.  Bex had a cold and I needed to de-stress from work, so we weren't planning to go sky diving or anything.

Saturday was:

• A stroll through a nearby nature preserve thing with Mr. P.  (whose official nickname has now become Mr. P-Nut, partially at his request)
• Being early spring, we may have gotten our feet a bit wet in the swamp.  And Bex nearly fell out of a tree into the water.  Mr. P-Nut and I may have laughed.  A tiny bit.
• A late lunch at the Cherry Top drive-in diner.  Kind of a strange experience....you just blink your lights for the waitress to come by?  The food was on the low side of average in my opinion, so no need for me to go back.
• Bex and I were slave labor for Father Dan moving tree stumps around and stuff.  By hand.  Until the last stump when Father Dan brought out the Rolls Royce cart.
• I accidentally smashed my thumb between two logs, and the bruise on that fingernail is just about to reach the end of my nail now.
• Bex used one of her cooking gadgets to make some kind of ethnic German thing called spatzle.  The good thing is, slave labor at that house does come with some perks like hearty, delicious meals.
• A trip to Aldi.

Sunday was:

• Onion meeting at the house of Mother Mary and Father Dan.
• Delicious lunch.
• A mini-hike with Uncle Bex.  Like usual, we picked up trash along the way.  Bex is kind of green like that.
• A trip to Aldi.
• The long drive home again.

Uneventful, yet restful.  As always, the thing most enjoyed is the fellowship.  It feels like I forgot some stuff about this weekend, but oh well.  This will do.

Looks like somebody (not us) made some turtle stew.

It's a nut!  (in the foreground, not in the background)

There are at least three snakes in this photo.  Can you spot them?

Remembering Memorial Day Weekend

It's hard to beat the brilliant green of North Dakota in the spring.

I was only two weekends ago, but it seems like a long time ago that I went back to ND for the long Memorial Day weekend.  It was a fairly mellow weekend.  Besides staying up late reading a book on my Kindle and the usual minor flight delays in O'Hare, it involved:

1. Hanging out with my sister and my new-ish niece.  We woke up at a relatively early hour, but we spent a good part of the day in our pajamas playing with the baby, talking, taking a nap, etc.  Even though BIL-Dan says people die in bed if they don't change out of their pajamas, we didn't change out of our pajamas until 3:00 PM on Friday.
2. I actually did some shopping, if you can believe it.  Granted it was at Eddie Bauer, but still....it was shopping.  Also, there is a shoe store in the West Acres mall in Fargo that has my number.  Nearly every time I go there they have what I'm looking for.  That's where I got my grandma sandals.
3. Saturday evening we sat on the back patio with Mom and Dad talking and watching the neighbors across the creek play cornhole.
4. Sunday AM meeting at Palt and Wearl's was special as usual.
5. Sunday afternoon was my cousin's graduation and celebration lunch.  I may have eaten a large snack and my supper there because Mom and Dad went to about four other graduation lunches, so they certainly weren't planning on eating supper.  It was good to see lots of extended family there.
6. We played with the baby one last time before Muggles and the baby went back home.
7. I tried to kill Mom by having her do an exercise video with me Sunday evening.  Luckily she has sense enough not to try to do everything at full throttle.
8. Monday morning we went to the cemetery to put some flowers on the graves of my grandparents.  I hadn't been there for several years.  It was good to see so many flowers, etc. on all the graves.  It was obvious people do remember.  Even my one cousin who only lived a day or two about 40 years ago had a tiny flower by his tiny grave.
9. After the solemnity, we went to an early lunch picnic / cookout with some friends and relatives, and then we rushed off to the airport.
10. The beautiful scenery of the ND landscape still exists there of course.

 

 

The newest niece - #5 for me!

Holding my niece.

My cousin Taylor all graduated.

At the graduation lunch - seeing the old farmstead again - and my cousins' red mustangs.

It's also hard to beat the black dirt you can see in ND in the spring.

Dad putting flowers on a grave.

People also remember the woikas.  Loving the gospel is certainly a testimony to strive for.

Memorial Day picnic at Hank and Beatta's.

2014 Bushel Basket List, Weeks 19 & 20

Checked off the list:  #7 - Play Softball - this is a little bit late because it took a few weeks to remember to get a picture.  The co-ed softball season did start in May, so I'm not totally slacking.

Mex and Krix

CFTRCC

CFTRCC = Coal-Fired Two Rivers Canoeing and Camping

That was the official trip name of this past long weekend.  A few of us went to the Ozarks in Missouri for - guess what?  Some canoeing and camping.  The coal-fired part came about because the other three got a tour of a coal power plant.  Unfortunately, I had to work and miss out on that fascinating part.  They even got to go 500 feet up to the top of the stack.  Mr. P. must have thought Bex and I weren't too bad to travel with, so he invited us on this trip he planned, and we invited The Nip along as well.  It was a very nice mellow, relaxing time.  A few highlights:

1. Best breakfast pizza ever.  Mr. P. brought his dutch oven and made a bunch of stuff in it like pineapple upside-down cake and cinnamon rolls.  But the breakfast pizza was definitely the best thing that came out of the dutch oven.  Crust, black bean salsa, pork sausage, eggs, and cheese.  A great combination.
2. Two awesome days of canoeing.  We did the Current River (18 miles) the first day and Jack's Fork the second day (14 miles).  The water is spring fed and was very clear.  The weather was glorious with very little rain and temperatures in the 80's every day.
3. There was only one incident of canoe tipping, and it was Bex and I who accidentally tipped ourselves trying to go on the "challenge" route around a sand bar.  That gets your adrenaline pumping as you try to rescue all the loose stuff that starts floating away.  I think I did manage to get it all.
4. We saw lots of wildlife.  Lots of blue herons and all kinds of turtles (large and small) were probably the most plentiful.  But there were some other things to see as well including a few birds we couldn't identify.  There were an amazing number of turtles crossing the roads too.
5. We had some nice clear nights that were great for seeing the stars.  It reminded me of this song.  We didn't see the northern lights, but the stars were clear as a bell.
6. A good car ride conversation with Uncle Bex about life in general.
7. Mr. P. read us a few short stories he had written back in his college days.  The one about the poolshark was the better one I thought.  One of the morals of the story was, "Never trust a unicorn."
8. We had some other good food, most of it cooked over the campfire, but a little bit of it not cooked on the campfire - trail mix, Cheetos, homemade bread/toast with jam, ham steak, bacon, marinated pork loin medallions, asparagus, summer squash, s'mores, potatoes, onions, juicy deluxe lunch sandwiches, Juusto.....we ate high on the hog for sure.
9. Tent camping.  It's not the most comfortable, but there is still something very nice about it.  Getting back to nature and all that.  Waking up to the alarm bird and cardinals blasting their morning songs.  And to the neighbors yelling about how good Kyle's coffee was.  Sometimes diphenhydramine helps with the sleeping.
10. We were having a discussion about introverts, and I thought a very interesting point was made.  You might think that because an introvert likes to spend some time alone that he or she would like to go on vacation by himself/herself.  However, you would likely be incorrect.  Because introverts are often shy and don't always make friends easily, they like to travel with someone they know because they're not as likely to just strike up a conversation with a stranger.  As opposed to extroverts, who are often excited to meet new people and would strike up a conversation with lots of people they randomly met.

That's probably enough on all of that.  Here are some pictures.  I think Bex has one of all four of us, but I don't have one.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll update it later if I get it from her.

Selfie as we get ready to launch the boats.

One of the many blue herons we saw.

Paddling on the river.

Ozark scenery on the Current River.

The Nip cutting down a windfall with a machete so we could have some firewood.

 

Mr. P. supervising the Dutch oven.

Dutch oven breakfast pizza.

 
At her request, the list of things that made Bex cackle uncontrollably on the trip:

1. We had just finished collecting ourselves after our canoe tipping, and I was joking about how we didn't want to get our head stuck in a fallen tree like Absalom.  And probably within 10 minutes, we accidentally got a little close to a fallen tree, nearly tipped again, and I almost did get hung up in a tree.  I could have been scalped if my hair had gotten caught!  Comedy is all about timing.
2. Over supper on Saturday we had a fairly lengthy conversation about introverts.  As the conversation finished, Mr. P. stood up and said, "I think I need to go back to my tent to have some alone time."  It doesn't sound so funny as I type this, but again, it was the timing and how he said it that made it so funny.
3. Telling Bex about "diapering up and getting to work" during the car ride.  It's a long story.  Ask me about it some time and I'll tell you.
4. Doing some pre-breakfast burpees while we waited for the food to cook.

Bex did deliver a picture of all four of us.

This might almost be a candidate for awkward family photos if we were a family.