SOME THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

It's 7:15am here Tuesday morning and we meet with the SDA at 10am to pick out a child or children. We'll post again this afternoon to let you know who we picked and where we're going.

In the meantime...

MONEY: Ukraine currency is the hryvnya (pronounced as "gr" at the beginning), as Ukraine is not a part of the EU. About a week before we left, the exchange rate was $1 USD to 7.7 hryvnya. When we arrived, it had moved to 8.6, meaning that our money goes 12% further. For example, a large coffee at McDonald's is 9.5 hryvnya, or about $1.10 under the new exchange rate.

APARTMENT BUILDINGS: Below is a photo of the outside of our apartment building. Some apartment buildings here, as is the case with ours, are owned by the government. So, the government is responsible for how the outside of the building looks as well as the stairwell. People buy individual apartment units and then renovate them however they want. In our apartment buildng, every door to the units is different because every owner picked a different door. While the exterior doesn't look so good, the individual units inside are nice. Ours, for example, has hardwoord floors and 12-inch stone tile throughout.



SMOKING: Everyone we know in Ukraine smokes, a common habit in Europe especially in eastern Europe. we were quite surprised to walk into a restaurant and find a non-smoking section the other day. As it turns out, there has passed a law that requires restaurants to have a certain percentage of space designated as non-smoking. We even found a restaurant that was completely non-smoking. This represents quite a shift in thinking.

ENGLISH: We also continue to find more and more people who speak English and more and more services in English. Our cell phone, for example, is recharged by buying a card with "units" on it and then uploading the units - via a phone call - to the phone's account. When we were here last, we had to memorize the sequence of keys to get us through the voice-based menu system because it was all in Russian. Now, the first voice instruction is also in English and asks you to select a number if you want everything in English. We have also eaten at 2 restaurants that have both sets of menus - one in Russian and one in English. Another restaurant had everything in 3 languages - Ukrainian, English, and Italian.

FOOD: Speaking of food, we continue to enjoy some nice dishes, including: borsch (traditional Russian soup that is usually a deep red color because of the presence of beetroot), chunks of turkey with mushrooms in a gravy sauce with potatoes (called turkey ragout), and - of course - fried pig ears. (Stephen had them last time we were here and couldn't resist the temptation to order them again.)




MCDONALD'S INVASION: McDonald's now appears on many street corners. When we were here last, we found a couple of McDonald's; now is we have 3 within walking distance of the apartment. It's interesting... when McDonald's opens a new franchise internationally, part of the agreement is that employees taking orders must be able to do so in English. So, if you ever need a language "fix,"' you can always go to McDonald's and order a big coffee with no milk.

It seems very cold here, although the day time temperature has consistently been in the upper teens and lower 20s. We always fight a 20mph north wind, and the sun never moves very high in the sky. Sunrise is about 7:45 and sunset is about 5pm.

We'll chat with you later this afternoon, hopefully with magnificent news. To Darian, Trevor, and Alexis - we miss you very much and love you dearly. All our best, Mom and Dad.