Sleepy Day

We slept and slept last night and today. Two weeks ago we received word to travel and we spent the week before flying preparing night and day (little sleep), then the last week here, all has been new and fast paced (little sleep) - plus time change - and last night, whew! We were out of it! Then, today, our attorney traveled to another town to work on paperwork on our behalf, so we had the day to ourselves. We slept more! And, we are still tired! We think that yesterday was such a good day that we finally let ourselves say, yes, all is good and we are with our Little Chix! No inspector, no evaluators, no one watching us, just the three of us together as a family. Our driver took us to the Children's Home from 3-5 this afternoon. One must be flexible in Ukraine. People value relationships, so if someone is taking longer than expected or things change, then you respect that and go with the flow. OK by us, we were napping! So good to let the body heal and get back to itself via sleep! At the Home, we let Little Chix teach us some Russian using a children's "you can learn Russian, too" workbook. We also had a book of mazes, because she likes doing mazes and Papa showed her how to do mazes on the iphone, which she went bonkers over! Technology is a universal attraction for kids! We bought a snack for Little Chix at the Comfy the other day - it was like a bag of chips with a cow on the front and a stalk of corn on the front. We had no idea, and figured it was milk popcorn or something. Well, it was like Sugar Pop-Cheese Puffs! She loved them! Imagine Sugar Pops (the breakfast cereal) stretched out to look like light yellow cheese puffs.That is what they were!

Tonight, we cooked up our New England Boiled dinner (minus the corned beef; vegetarian style) and it was good. We topped it off with a dessert of pineapple yogurt, cheery juice, dried apricots, and figs.We slept through lunch, but did have a good breakfast of oatmeal and bread, so were fine waiting till dinner. Here are some pics of our apt. from the inside. It is very, very nice. Enjoy!

Carrots - we ate them for dinner. Very sweet and more intense in flavor than US carrots.

And yes, they are HUGE!

Space is very limited. The window-sill serves as a counter also! Mr_S is cutting cabbage and we were listening to Ukrainian radio on the jambox.

 Kitchen

Kitchen to scale. This is it .

Standing inside the front door. The other side of the arch is the "plumbing rooms" - the kitchen, shower room and toilet room.

Toilet has a room to itself.  In the shower room, notice that the towel on the right is sitting on the washing machine. The sink is on the left. There are no dryers. It is very environmental compared to the US, because the washers are low water and has such great extrators that the clothes are nearly dry when you remove them. One night on the rack and they are dry! Saves electricity too!

 Clothes drying in our "computer room."

 Bedroom - nice wardrobe! No closets here - they use wardrobes.

The room were our attorney sleeps. We share the apt.

Oh, and a funny story that happened on our drive from the train to where we are now. We were looking out the car window along the highway. Mr_S was sitting in the front seat and Miss_A in the backseat of the car. Almost at the same time, we said outloud: "Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior!" Then we laughed hilariously! You had to be there. There is a movie that our friend Matt recommended called "Everything is Illuminated." (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404030/). Many pretty scenes are in the movie, and one was of a beautiful yellow field with a blue sky (like the Ukrainian flag, actually) and when we both saw that scene out of the car window, it reminded us of the movie, but we could only say the dog's name: Sammy Davis Junior, Junior! What a hoot! (This is what happens when you have been married for a long time!)