Kvas! Квас!

Summer in Ukraine always comes with these little special trains. I met up with this one about 5 times yesterday am as I went to meet an early bus. A kvas train. ;) Interesting article. I'm not much of a fan but it's very popular here.

cute, eh?  

The driver has a route and periodically drops off a trailer at designated spots around the city. 

later in the day- a girl sits here all day and draws up drinks for all who wish. 

S got a glass! 

photo catch-up

one last look out the living room balcony window, Kyiv

and the kitchen window. I'll miss this view!

cute picture on the window of a bus at the bus stop... turtle on wheels. Love the exhaust pipe!

when you clean out your cupboards you sometimes find stuff you didn't know you had and decide to see what a mud mask will do for you... answer- not much. It was a one time thing, I've decided. And should not be done in a pale pink t-shirt. 

the view out my current window... not bad, eh? Love the green and the sunshine. 

stopped in to see some dear friends. Eldest son had baked bread... Little Sis and I made the salad. 

someone is doing some building. Take a bunch of straw and mix it with mud (and horse manure, I've heard) and spread it out nice and evenly, cut it and let it dry. Voila- adobe bricks. Much of the building in this part is done like this. 

close-up of the bricks

Aug 31

I came down to the south a little over a week ago. It's been crazy busy and won't slow down anytime soon. That's ok. I like life busy. ;)

• The weather's been wishy-washy- cool and breezy one day, sunny and breezy and warm the next, humid and miserable the next, then cooler again, then downright hot again. I guess it's typical late summer weather. 
• Ukrainian schools open tomorrow- all schools. From Universities on down to grade schools. They always begin Sept 1st (or a day or 2 later if the 1st is on the weekend). They always close on May 31st (or a day or 2 later if it falls on a weekend). Always. No exceptions, anywhere, ever...as far as I know. I kind of like it- no confusion, everyone's on the same schedule. 
• Remember this kid? She graduated from university and has taken a position teaching German at a university. I'm in awe. When did she turn into a Big Girl? Her whole family is growing up while I turn around and I'm not quite ready for it...
• went to see this darling little dumpling today... and his mommy, too. Mom is a former student of S'. The last all-nighter I ever pulled was with S and this kid's mom. May, 2005- She had to do her final paper and at the last minute, didn't have access to a computer or a printer. So, we all stayed up all night typing and proofing and printing and collating and stuffing pages into sheet protectors. And then had a 6 am bus to Odessa. S&I slept the whole way. And the whole day was a blur. That's when I knew I was officially too old for that kind of stuff! ;)
• Mom telling Daughter good-bye. Met them in town, had lunch with them then helped wave Daughter off on the bus. School starts tomorrow. She'll be there. Way up north. She gets home about twice during the school year and then for the summer. These 2 mean the world to each other. I've never heard a cross word from either directed at the other. Glad we had a little more time with them, too...together. Special.
• It's pouring down rain. CatsAndDogs. Well- we need the rain. Walking down dirt streets and through fields- you're gliding through ankle-deep dust. Quite a contrast to the mud from June. 

lucky dog

Lucky dog!

onward

Remember how hot is was? (Yes- WAS!) Mon afternoon, cold air just sort of meandered in- I don't know how it happened- no storm, no wind, no nothing- just suddenly, it cooled off. And it's been really nice ever since. Don't get me wrong- it's still not hard to sweat- cool is down from high 90's and over 100 to high 70's and somewhere in the 80's... But- It is definitely better! Yay! In fact, it has that early fall feel. 

Last post, someone asked re recipes using egg whites- the only thing I do with them is angel food cake which is delightful! Here's the recipe And- you can freeze your egg whites and save them until you have enough for a cake. (Phyllis always collected them and used them for meringue on pies.)

My 5 year old niece lost a tooth and started school. :( Stop. Right now. You're a tiny baby, don't you know? I'm not ready for this. In fact, her slightly younger cousin, my beautifully blonde tiny baby nephew was also starting school. Who says they're old enough for that? I need to cuddle them yet... 

And let's not even talk about the twins heading off to preschool. Or the 'big boys' in 2nd and 3rd grade. I can't imagine what it's like to be a parent and watch them sail away from you. How do you survive? 

Daddy Cats sometimes kill kittens (I've heard it's because they perceive them as a potential threat to their own position as the dominant male in an area). Whatever- the little guy over at the farm I just spent some time at has a shoulder wound- Daddy tried to kill him. But Mommy is so fierce she saved Baby and Mean Daddy was sent packing. But- when you can't sleep at 4 and 4.30 and 5 in the morning because you had too much coffee the day before because there was no coffee the 2 previous days because they'd run out and there was no store close- ok- well then a little coffee is too much and you can't sleep and you hear cats squalling you get all worried for Baby and hope he's not being mauled and decapitated or worse (worse?) by Mean Big Nasty Male Cat... it's not really pleasant at 4 something in the morning. But Baby was found safe and sound later all curled up in his nest. But I'm afraid his days are numbered. This seems to be a very persistent Ugly Cat. It's a rough world.

what's this??

this is what you do with the egg whites you find in the freezer. It's a shame- a crying shame- to waste perfectly good egg whites. We made it, we ate it, it was DECLICIOUS!!!

this is how you beat the heat on a hot train when you're too little to notice that no one else is running around in their undies...

this is Little Boy A at the bus station, happily running around playing in puddles, rolling on the ground, licking the cement

On to the next puddle

This is Little Boy B at the bus station. His mom would not let him: 1- run through puddles. 2- roll on the ground. 3- lick the cement. And he wanted to, believe me... 

:) Guess

It's what we did today- besides go to the lake and have a cookout and sweat buckets. We made these yummy things and then rolled them in powdered sugar. Oh Wow. Krispy Kreme, you got nothing on us. We are All Over You.
burp.

Have a good rest of the weekend. Especially if you're at Shoals... where I'd love to be and hope to be in One Short Year!!! ;)

still hot

I know- it's hot there, too. Ok. So- How hot? I'll bet my hot can beat up your hot...

Ok- so we won't fight. But- it's still hot. Really hot. Yesterday, left Kyiv at 7am... arrived at destination at 12.20 or so. Had 2 liters of liquids while we traveled. And was still thirsty. The bus driver had gotten clever and bolted a small fan onto the ceiling which twirled around and moved hot air over us. Thank goodness for that. Couldn't say it was cool, though. It's that time of year when you start really missing the cold and snow. 

Someone asked in the comments of a previous post re online comics. I get mine on 2 sites: Arcamax (link for Agnes) and Gocomics.com. Gocomics has an RSS feed that delivers to Google Reader. I get my Arcamax comics in my email inbox. Looks like they have an RSS feed, though... 

speaking of comics...

We went to the lake this afternoon but had to hurry back because there was company coming... and they brought sausages for a cookout... and they brought about a dragon's worth. Wow. They were good, too... More like Bratwursts... the kind I didn't even know you could get here. I've moved on to strong black tea now... it sort of helps after sausage overdose. They were good though...did I already say that???

We've been eating a lot of this again. Not waiting in the patch for magic, though. Chilled and served on a hot day (is it hot enough there for this??) they're magic all by themselves. Also found out they're really REALLY good whizzed up with cold yogurt and a peach in a smoothie. Wow.

Maybe you've heard about the fires in Russia. Have been terrible. And the smoke from the fires has travelled. The death rate in Moscow has nearly doubled due to the high heat and smoke pollution. And we have some of that smoke here, too. Nothing like Moscow but the air in Kyiv for more than a week was just hazy. And the first week, my eyes burned from it. Moscow in smoke.

And the big move in Kyiv.. is over. History. It must have been 110F the day I finished the packing and cleaning and turned in the keys. There comes a point when you're just tired of the whole mess and move into 'chop chop' gear no matter how hot it is. And then go take a cold shower. And still look like you have heat stroke.
Glad it's over though.

Agnes is the other me

Having not so long ago been on a bus where there was an attempt made at getting all the passengers (English speaking or not) to take part in 20 Questions (something that is, I might add, rather A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N), I found this rather fitting.

ps- I'm sure that in this instance, I'm Agnes. All the way.

supper in the hot summer

What to have for supper when it's too hot to cook? Smoothies! We've been having them a lot... and not just for supper. T's here to help so I strong-armed her into bringing their wand (the 1-legged gadget with the blade at the bottom for blending stuff)- so that we can make smoothies. The one above had Watermelon yogurt, (a little bit of fake) maple syrup, fresh peaches, frozen cherries, frozen black currants... and possibly some stuff I've forgotten. It was good, for sure.

Tomorrow we have orange and peaches and black currants to use up. Yum. 

And every day, along about 10 am or so, we get out the ice cream and pour some coffee over it and a bit of maple syrup (it really is fake- 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup boiling water- bring to a boil and add a tsp of maple flavoring) and then zap that with the wand- Coffee Smoothies are the way to get through the morning! 

In other great (and mostly irrelevant to all but me and Pyllis and the landlady)- we're basically packed. Got the last of the big stuff done up. Now it's just the stuff that we're using. A lot of that gets bundled up at the last minute and hauled across town to Lillian. Yay! I feel more relaxed than I have all week! ;)

summer re-visited, 1

These kids played a lot of football (soccer for the North Americans) this summer. 

See the kid with the white arm and hand? Yep- it's broken. He broke it playing volleyball... but that didn't stop him playing volleyball nor did it hinder his football much...

Buddies. I think they were watching the football as this and the next were in the middle of a whole slew of football pix.

Life's pretty grand!

Since we've been on the CB trail recently. Around here, we take several cold showers a day. Because it's hot. And because the hot water gets shut off by the city every summer. Makes sense, right? I mean, who wants hot water in the summer? Not me. Not right now anyway.
Oh yeah- this was supposed to be CB's show. There is just no end to the humiliation... 

(fond) memories of winter

It's hot here. I know the weather's not worth talking about, really... but it sort of makes itself known these days. I get to feeling all nostalgic for winter...

Windows stay wide open day and night... a cockroach got in my window today, tried to hide under my bedroll (truly a bedroll- on the floor, it's cooler there) but I managed to smash him and haul his carcass out!

sorting, pitching, packing... amazing what I'm finding. Passport pix from back when I still looked like a kid. Wow. (pitched) Fun stuff. Boring stuff. Lots of stuff. Some I need, some I don't. Gave away a bunch of stuff. I like stuff... but enough is enough

Too hot to cook. We've been alternating between cold cereal, tuna salad and McDonald's. Trude came yest. Today she cooked us square meals. She's got stuff going for tomorrow, too. Amazing. She must not have noticed the heat. 

Did I mention the heat? Have a little keychain that's a thermometer. It stayed right at 97F on my desk all day... but I suspect it's not quite accurate. The humor* is fairly low and it's just scorching hot... which isn't 97F.
*a dear friend (whose native tongue is NOT English) recently referred to the humidity over and over again as 'humor'... needless to say, it stuck and we've been having a blast with it since!

supermartkets!

10 years ago when I arrived in Ukraine, there were very few stores of any kind that you didn't have to get all your goods from the clerk behind the counter. There was one 'grocery cart' store in L'viv where we lived and we went there about once a month for big shops just for the thrill of pushing around a cart! It looked like an abandoned warehouse with shelves and pallets of goods. It was pretty hit and miss as far as what you could get. When you left the store, you walked out the door and onto a loading dock and had to find your way down and out of there. But it was a store. With grocery carts. Nevermind that store employees would shadow you all over the store just to make 100% sure that you didn't steal their stuff. It was so great to simply have your own cart and be able to touch stuff, get it off the shelves yourself. It felt so advanced, so civilized, so... so... so HOME-y! Ten years later, I hardly ever enter any store that isn't self-serve. We also shopped at the bazaar every week- it was the only place to get fresh stuff... well, you could also get it from people selling their stuff along the sidewalk. Fast forward to now- I seldom set foot in the bazaar. You can survive very well, thank you, without the hassles of the bazaar or the overcrowded corner store with one long counter, one clerk and shelves of stuff behind them. (the above pix are of a very clean and not-so-typical Soviet style store... was the only one I could find!)
Today there was an interesting article on Neatorama about the history of supermarkets in America. In case you don't want to go read it (what?!) I'll tell you that the first grocery store (Piggly Wiggly) opened in TN in 1916; the first grocery with free parking right at the store was Kroger in Indianapolis; the first super store supermarket opened in 1930 (on Long Island); the shopping cart was invented and put into use in 1937; in 1951, there were 3 new supermarkets a day opening in the US.

Which all makes me wonder how on earth it could have been so long coming here. Oh yeah- a small thing called Communism. Never mind- they're here now and we are So Glad! ;)

oh wow! Oldies but goodies! ;)

Finding old pix on old discs I'd forgotten I had.

remember this?

How's this for cute?! This kid is now 10, nowhere near this little... and even manages to be serious every now and again... at least twice a week... Sun am and Wed eve...

The kid on the left? He's a daddy now (!!)

kid on right is same as one at the top. With his big brother- some of you should know them.

Trude- this one and the next two are for you! 

from K Hettich, 2003(?) One of my all-time favorite pix!

one fantastic piano! in a fantastic house with fantastic people!

what you don't see when you ain't got a gun!

where's this?

and this?

this?

is this not the coolest?

I'll stop now... need to get some sleep yet tonight! ;)