Hoppy Easter

Happy Hoppy Easter to everyone, and to our bunnies at home - Cuddles and Patches. We hope to fly home on Wednesday! It will be 6 weeks here and we are more than ready to be home. We can't wait! We hope with all our hearts that this schedule will work.

Yesterday, we took it pretty easy. We went to swing in the park, ate dinner at a Subway-type of place, spent the afternoon on English lessons and Karina (who doesn't like the nickname Little Chix we learned, afterall) worked on about 10 pages of her Russian "How to Learn English" workbook. Papa returned to Read City while Karina and Mama had an English lesson with Lilya and came home with 9 workbooks in Russian to help Karina learn English! He discovered that the third floor of Read City is loaded with textbooks, and he purchased 9 workbooks of various levels written in Russian to help kids learn English. Karina loved them, and was self-motivated to do the exercises while Mama cheered her on. She found success in accomplishing them, and that gave her confidence. Liliya's weblinks also were fun for her, and she had a blast playing with them last night. We all laughed, because she was having a good time. It is amazing that we can carry 6 weeks worth of clothes, all bathroom supplies, 2 days worth of food, 39 books, CDs and games, coats, computers and paperwork and be so transportable as today at noon, we moved to a different apartment in the suburbs, which is very French-souvenirish and very interesting for Karina. She is taking it easy today because she has a cold and is watching Nichelodean and MTV. Kids do not use kleenex, because paper is a luxury for them, so we are teaching her how to blow her nose. They are also used to not flushing toilet paper (it goes in the trash can), but we have that under control. There is a park outside of the kitchen window and we will go there and swing later tonight. Mama cooked chicken breasts in butter and garlic and salt for lunch with sliced carrots. Papa liked it a lot and Karina didn't, but she ate two servings of salad (red pepper, cucumber, and cherry tomatoes). We stopped by the supermarket on the way to the new apt., and Mama tried to sneak a chocolate "Hello Kitty" Easter eggs into the purchase, but Ms.Cat-Eyes (Karina) saw it and so it was no surprise, but she jumped up and down and was excited about the chocolate egg, and Mama got a big hug in return! There was a little-bitty Hello Kitty toy inside the little chocolate egg, and she kissed Mama for that. The simple things are so rich for the children! She likes potato chips (and we tease her about chips versus Chip, the little cracked cup on Beauty and the Beast - she gets it!). Here, they have interesting flavors of chips, like crab, bacon, squid and of course, the traditional sour cream. She chose a bag of crab (краб) chips.

We did go to a short service on Good Friday at St. Andrews cathedral. The priests were chanting and swinging incense and she recognized the seriousness of the occasion. Today, we were going to do an Easter-egg hunt with the Ukrainian eggs that we bought, but honestly, there are so many souvenir eggs already here in our apt. that look like ours, we decided against it, because ours may get blended in to the mix and lost for good, and so we'll wait till next year to talk about Easter.

Tomorrow morning, Mama plans to cook French toast (as we are feeling French in this new French-style apt!), including juice and scrambled eggs. Then we will venture to the "dream" place where kids can go ice skating, bowling, eat pizza, etc. We have heard from other families that it is a fun place and only a 20 minute walk. That will be our day tomorrow. On Tuesday, we are banking on a successful day at the embassy and a good medical exam. We're keeping our hopes up for Tuesday, so that we can fly out on Wed.

A note to families traveling after us: when you make flight arrangements, please check on your airline's policy for rescheduling. We were told it would be one price, and agreed to that, but just found out that our airline (United Air/Lufthansa) is not in compliance with a certain policy, so we are having to pay a mountain-load to fly home unless we stay 7 more days after today. Honestly, if we had known, we could have managed the situation. We are not given the opportunity to manage much, and as such must trust a lot, so in offering advice for being pro-active: know the airline policies, dates and timing of when you can do what so it can be put on someone's radar. Hoping for a good week ahead - more as we know more.  Happy Hoppy Easter to all!