Spring!

Spring finally arrived in Kyiv late last week. All the signs are there: mid-day public drunkenness, gratuitous makeout sessions on public park benches, and, of course, the return on the summer-length skirts.

Closer to home, Laika has been spending her afternoons enjoying the return of the sun.

We had a big decision to make over the weekend – what would be our last adventure here in Kyiv? We finally decided on the circus. Even though it’s an easy walk from our apartment, we hadn’t ever made it there for a performance. And we had been told that it was actually entertaining.

I’m sure my mom will correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I had ever been to a circus before. So I wasn’t sure what parts of the weirdness were general circus weirdness and what parts were Ukrainian weirdness. But it was definitely entertaining. And Shawn had a lot of fun laughing at what I like to call my “childlike sense of wonder.” Like the fact that I gasped every single time an acrobat made a jump.

There were a lot of highlights for me, but one of the best (and Ukrainian weird, I think) was the random showgirl act in the middle. Nothing says family-friendly like a bunch of scantily-clad women gyrating to “Let’s Get Loud.” I was also really freaked out by the porcupines for some reason. Something about the clicking sound their quills made as they ran by us (we were in the front row). And one of the porcupines was the only animal that managed to escape into the audience. They’re evil, I tell you.