Safe In Kyiv Ukraine

It was an uneventful trip across the Atlantic. We both chose the curry chicken for supper and drank as much water as they offered us. Somewhere between New York and England Monday became Tuesday. I made it a point to rest/sleep as much as possible. Even so I listened to the first seven chapters of The Death of Ivan Illych. John passed the time with various movies and television episodes. We arrived before dawn in Frankfurt and had coffee with money that Slovadon (across the street form the broken house in Iowa) had given for that specific purpose. In the gate we made the acquaintance of a man who was former pastor, now pest control expert, from Florida. Our plane fro Kyiv left 80 minutes late because the wings needed to be de-iced The pilot said that is only necessary once or twice in a whole year. At the Borispol (Kyiv) airport we were met just inside the building by a man holding a paper with our name on it. Our passage through customs, once our luggage finally appeared on carousel couldn’t have been smoother.

On the other side Oleksandr greeted us as friends and deftly delivered us to the private hotel we used last time, checking us into a very nice room and securing wireless Internet access for us. Since then we have checked in with family; purchased a new sim card for our Ukrainian mobile phone, two new converters for the outlets, cups for tea, bottled water, pistachio halva and fresh almonds and cashews. We had our first in-country Ukrainian borsht in nearly three years at the café on corner of our block for supper, and now we are just trying to stay awake long enough to get a good, full night’s sleep and adjust to the eight-hour time shift.