And in craziness even closer to home, I woke up the morning after we got back and saw this out the living room window:

Yup. That’s two men on the ridgepost of a five-story building with no safety gear. I can’t tell from this angle, but I would guess they’re wearing slippers with socks (the traditional footwear of Ukrainian workers) as well. And just so you can see exactly how far off the ground they are:

It all started innocently enough - we needed a vacation and the cheapest flights were to Madrid via Rome. Off to Madrid we went. However, when we got to Rome, we needed boarding passes for our second leg of the journey to get through security. Oddly enough, there was no one from Alitalia to be found at any of their desks. Then we heard the announcement: Alitalia was in union meetings from 8am to 1pm and 3pm to 8pm and we should “expect delays.” Not a good sign. We parked ourselves by one of their desks and waited to get our passes. Eventually succeeding, we headed to our gate. That’s when the cancellations started. And we sat there until 2 hours past our departure time with absolutely no information (but a very sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach). Then our flight was cancelled. I won’t detail the craziness that ensued as we joined thousands of passengers trying to find luggage and the correct line to stand in to rebook. (We mistakently stood in the lost luggage line for about 20 minutes at one point. It was total chaos.)

We finally found one of three lines that had formed for the rebooking of flights. Then began the longest 6 hours of my life. That’s right - six hours of standing, occassionally broken up by watching fellow line-members being interviewed by the press (that started about an hour in) as well as the fights that started breaking out after we passed the 3-hour mark.

By the time we made it to the front, we could get a flight for the next day (on a different airline), but there were no free hotel rooms left. So we were on our own to find a place to stay and we were not staying at the airport. That was when the following conversation took place, exhibiting just how delirious I was:

Me: Okay. We just need to sit down and look for a place in our guidebook.

Shawn (sitting down and opening his bag): Wait. What guidebook?

Me (with disgust): Our Spain guidebook.

Shawn: (pointed stare)

Me: (blank stare back)

Shawn: Jennifer, we’re in Rome.

Me: Oh. Yeah.

Hilarious after the fact, but at that point it was after 11pm and we had gotten up at 4:30am that morning. So cut me some slack. We did eventually make it to Spain. Photos and details will be forthcoming.

To prove that it was indeed the Marine Ball, here I am with two of my favorite Marines, Garett and Tyler:

And now it’s time to pack for vacation. We’ll be in Spain for the next week!

One of the Marines also dressed up like Elvis, stealing Shawn’s thunder. However, we quickly learned that it is every Ukrainian girl’s dream to have her photo taken with two Elvises, so Shawn spent a good portion of the evening posing with scantily-clad maids/angels/devils/etc. Score one for The King!

I’ve spent today finishing our Halloween costumes. I’ll be sure to post photos from the party tomorrow night. They should be pretty entertaining.

And you may have noticed from my bookshelf sidebar that I’m reading a book on economics. I’m trying really hard to understand the financial crisis, even though it’s something I would normally find completely boring. I think Shawn and I have at least one conversation a day lately that starts with me saying, “Can you explain to me why….?” I think I’m getting there, but he recommended this book to me and so far it’s pretty good. The author promises no graphs or formulas and uses plenty of antecdotes to explain concepts.

But the most recent excitement here came in the form of a babushka selling small pumpkins on the street yesterday. I don’t remember seeing any pumpkins last year, so I squealed with delight when I saw them and made Shawn buy some for me. Laika has shown a large interest in these foreign objects in our living room.

And sleep has been in short supply here lately. Shawn’s hacking cough kept us both up at night for a good portion of the past week. And Laika’s…having issues, I guess you would say. We’ve altered the nighttime routine in hopes that will help her sleeping patterns — i.e. stop her from waking us up at some point between 1am and 5am every night. So she pretty much gets run of the house all night now (sorry, Peema…), and it seems to be working so far. She’s been coming into the bedroom to get one of us up at 6am to lay on the couch with her, but we’ve declared that we can both live with that.

I’ve been really busy for the past few weeks. After two muslins (the pattern was old and needed a lot of work to fit like I wanted it to), I’m almost finished with my ball gown. And now I’ve added two Halloween costumes to the pile of projects in my sewing space. Finding Halloween costumes in Ukraine has turned out to be a difficult task. You know how in the States, you would just run to the nearest Goodwill, Dollar Store, or Target, and pick out cheap things that you could make into something? It doesn’t work that way here. You have to buy real things - with real (over)prices - and work with that. Or start from scratch. Right now I’m working with $30 worth of fabric that will soon be a costume for me. Today we went to a local mall, and $40 later, we’ve got the beginnings of a costume for Shawn. It still needs quite a bit of work and there will be another trip to the fabric store, but we’re on track to actually have costumes by the 31st.

In interesting neighborhood news: When we came back from shopping today, we noticed that they are building a wall down the middle of the street behind our apartment building. Which should do wonderful things to the already terrible traffic. A little further on, we found that they are building another wall blocking the back alleyway we often use as a shortcut to get home. I’m starting to get a little worried that we’ll wake up one day to find that we’ve been completely walled into our building. That might just be the last straw.

In Kyiv, this time of year is the time of falling chestnuts. Something like 80% of the trees in Kyiv are chestnut trees, so that’s a lot of nuts. And they seem to fall 4 or 5 at a time, so you’ve really got to watch out. I saw a woman take a serious blow to the head last week. The really strange thing is that people here don’t seem to eat chestnuts.  When the apple trees lose their fruit, you see plenty of babushky picking them up and selling them on street corners. But there are currently millions of chestnuts on the ground here, and no one pays a bit of attention. No chestnuts roasting on open fires or anything. You would think there would even be some sort of special Kyiv dish with chestnuts - they’re so into that sort of thing here. Like chestnut dumplings with sour cream and dill. Yeah. That would be Chestnut Kyiv.

The fabric store I ended up at was a rather large one that a friend of mine pointed out to me soon after we moved here. However, I remember thinking that all the fabric there was overpriced and had not made a trip back. Apparently after living here for almost a year and a half, my perception of “overpriced” has changed. I found quite a few things that I liked that weren’t terribly expensive. Granted, not JoAnn’s bargain section priced, but not too bad. But I was on a mission. And fabric/notion shopping here isn’t exactly a one-stop sort of experience, so here’s how it went down.

First I find the fabric. I haven’t a clue what it actually is, but it’s a little shiny, a good color, has good drape, and comes from Japan (that much I could read on the label). Then I figure out how to get the attention of the guy behind the counter. There’s no moving the sample piece from the wall, so I point frantically and say “this” repeatedly until he figures out exactly what I want. He asks me how much and I tell him 4 meters. (I think I bought way too much, but I forgot to take into account that I’m using a pattern from the 1940’s and apparently fabric wasn’t as wide back then? Oh well, maybe I can make a camisole out of the leftovers.) Then I pay him and head upstairs - which actually involves going outside - to look for notions.

I take my bag of fabric to the woman behind the thread counter. She takes it from me and picks out thread that matches. That’s right, there’s no touching of the thread. I have to say, she did an awesome job, though. I suppose if that’s what you do all day, you get pretty good at it. So I pay her for the thread.

Then I take my fabric and thread and head to the zipper counter. I again hand my fabric over and manage to say “I want a zipper, but I don’t want to see it.” (This was the closest I could come to saying “invisible zipper” with my limited Russian. She seemed to get what I meant.) She pulls out the closest colors they have and shows me that they don’t have an exact match. But she’s nice enough to explain that there is another store across the street that sells a wider variety of zippers. So I take my fabric back and head to where she’s directed me.

Turns out it’s another “All for Sewing.” And this one’s the size of a closet. So I figure out what zipper I need and then stand back to see what the procedure is here. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be one. So I push my way to the front and shout out what I need at the first available opportunity. My tactics work and my shopping is complete!

All of that took about an hour and a half. I’m so glad it went well, but I’m not sure if my nerves can handle another fabric shopping trip here any time soon. But that will give me a good excuse to “catch up” on buying new fabric when I get back to the US.

Since I have also visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, I can say with authority that Chornobyl is not the most depressing place on earth. I would actually classify it as creepy rather than depressing. I think the Chornobyl museum in Kyiv is more depressing than the site itself. But I have to say that I was glad to have visited the museum a few times since the “guide” for our day trip to Chornobyl took a rather hands off approach to tour guiding. He held up the Geiger counter at the appropriate times and allowed us to gasp at how high the number reached, but he was not exactly forthcoming with information about the disaster.

After we made it through passport control at the entrance to the exclusion zone (about 30 kilometers away from the power station), we drove through the town of Chornobyl. This was the town that the station was named after and is currently the part-time home of the people who still work at the station doing maintenance and monitoring (Chornobyl is no longer a functioning nuclear power station as of 2000). Then it was off to the station to see the sarcophagus that now covers the exploded reactor.

The next stop was the most interesting (and creepy) part of the day. We went to Pripyat, which was the city where all of the power station workers lived (it was built specifically for that purpose when the power station was constructed). It is, literally, a ghost town. When it was evacuated, people were forced to leave all their belongings behind and no one has lived there since. Buildings are crumbling, trees grow through concrete, and wild boar and wolves roam through the tall grass.

I assumed we would just be driven through town on our minibus, but it turns out that there is one building in town, the Hotel Polisya, that visitors are allowed to enter. Our guide encouraged us to climb to the top (seventh) floor to get some good views of the city. Of course, he also stated that the building could fall down at any time - “hopefully not today.” Right. So we climbed at our own risk, the entire time stating that this would never happen in the US, at least not without signing a dozen release forms first.

Exploring the hotel was kind of like walking through a horror movie. I kept waiting for the zombies to show up. It was hard to tell how much of the building was still “just as it was” on that fateful day in 1986 and how much had been altered by vandals and previous tourists. (We’re guessing the room we found full of gas masks was probably a set up.) We made it up the stairway - covered in broken glass - to the top where we found trees growing out of the linoleum floor. There was a good view that demonstrated just how close these people lived to the power station. Other than our group, it was completely silent and no movement could be seen in any direction.

Our final stop in Pripyat was an area where amusement park rides had been set up for the 1986 May Day celebrations. A rusty ferris wheel covered by vines on one side towered over the area. A tree was growing through another ride. And the bumper cars, while still recognizable, were in pretty sad shape. After we walked around for a while (this was where our guide told us he had spotted wild boars in the past), we got back on the minibus and headed back to the town of Chornobyl. We stopped a couple places in town where the government had moved some vehicles after the disaster. This time our guide told us not to get too close (I guess the metal holds radiation better) and I noticed that he didn’t even venture out of the bus for a smoke as he had on every other stop.

Then it was lunch (yes, I can now say I’ve eaten lunch in Chornobyl!) and back to Kyiv. But first, another stop at the entrance to the exclusion zone where we were all “tested” to ensure that our radiation levels were low enough to reenter society. We individually climbed into a contraption that looked like it was the best of 1972 technology and were deemed “cheesty” (clean) or “grazny” (dirty). Luckily, we all made it through with clean marks. I’m not really sure what would have happened otherwise. Condemned to a life in Chornobyl? Maybe that’s where they got the workers that are still employed by the power station.

All in all, it was definitely worth the trip and humbling to see a place where such a major disaster occurred.