Dream Town

Yuk! No dream for us.

We slept in, primarily because we know Karina has had a lot of new things to deal with and sleeping helps to process them. Also, she likes to read, and did not go to bed until 10pm, even though she settled in at 9. That is OK - she started a detective/love book, which is a step up from the Winx Club. We ate our French toast and scrambled eggs, which she liked, and walked 20 minutes to "Dream Town" - a 3 story, monster mall where commercialism prevails and kids can ice skate, roller blade, bowl, do arcades, bungee jump, play bumper cars, etc. She bungee jumped and tried to do bumper cars with Papa, but she had no clue how to make her car work, so that was not much fun. We walked around the huge mall for about 3 hours and even took her into a toy store and she did not ask for a thing. She knew this was not our bag. She and Papa ate pizza for lunch, and Mama had a baked potato. She and Mama then scheduled nail appointments in the mall because Mama needed it by now, and although she had hers done 4 days ago, her hands were still pretty awful. (The lady at the nail place gave Ann the what-for because her daughter's nails were in such bad shape.) It will take a while to get those hands in decent shape. The nail-lady was caring and diligent and worked for an hour on Karina's hands. She discussed the use of hand lotion with Karina, and we will add that into our nightly routine. Karina chose hot pink for polish. Oh well! she is quite proud of the color: her favorite!

Anyway, this dream town is no dream for us. The materialism wore us out. Fur coats (something we don't agree with at all), ocean creatures killed and stuffed and used as displays (no way to treat creatures), and enough jewelry, clothes and shoes for the entire city all packed into the gimongus mall. We have not been to Mall of America, but think this may be something similar. We offered Karina a choice of bumper cars (sharing a car with Papa this time) or a candy heart filled with about 10 jelly beans. She had asked for both. She chose the heart because it had her Winx idol, Bloom, on the front of it. Other than this, dream town made us miss nature, flora and fauna alike, and helped us realize that people who live in the city and do not experience the natural environment don't really get how over-consumption is destroying our earth's precious natural resources.

We had some quiet time after the walk back to the apartment. We had to work on some admin stuff, and she needed to process without us. After about an hour, she and Mama made dinner together (which for all 3 of us included an orange-pepper, a cucumber, 2 tomatoes, a pear which she loved!, some summer sausage, bread, butter, an eclair, cheese for Papa and juice for all - oh, and the remaining crab potato chips!) It was delicious! She thought it was the best supper!

After dinner, she and Mama went to the park and she swang. She swang for an hour, this time without Mama pushing her as much. We saw a man who was there yesterday and Ann spoke to him in Russian and he spoke to her in English! They had a very nice conversation. He was very nice. Another Dad was swinging his little daughter and picking up trash from the park. He was also very nice. Then, when we were unlocking the door to enter the apartment after swinging, the couple in the next door apartment gave us best wishes and 4 decorated hard boiled eggs - in Ukrainian decorations! How sweet! What nice people live around us!

Stuart has some observations from today. He saw a Ukrainian driver back up a car at 20 mph with pinpoint accuracy in a parking lot. Every age group was engaged in the park tonight - the toddlers and their parents on the play equipment, the young boys running and chasing each other, the teenagers hanging out and/or playing soccer, the middle-aged guys on their porches smoking a cigarette and having a vodka, and the grandparents pushing their grandkids in strollers. People care about this place. One man picked up trash, one man carried water from his house in 5 gal. buckets to the little sapling trees, and one person planted a flower bed.

Another nice thing about today was Karina's visit to the little store in the parking lot. We give her our coins every time we get some from a transaction. She collects them. She wanted sok (juice) at the little parking lot store, so Mama had her count her coins. She had 2.40 grivna (about 15 coins that equaled about 30 cents). The apple juicepack was 2.60, but the lady let her have it for 2.40. That was really sweet of her.

We settled on airplane tickets to be issued for Wednesday. Please send your best that tomorrow's embassy work in the afternoon and medical exam go well. If all goes well, we will fly out early, early Wed. AM and arrive in SC around midnight. Speechless. Absolutely, speechless if we can pull that off. Tomorrow is day 40 in Ukraine.