Yes. I let my dog play in the shower. Sometimes it’s the only way I can get her to be quiet long enough to get myself ready in the morning. My apologies to the planet for the wasted water.

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:

So on the way back in, I suddenly heard a ruckus in front of our building. The blind guy that lives in our neighborhood was trying to walk down our street.

(Aside: Sometimes I see people in Kyiv, like our blind neighbor, and I just want to go up to them and ask, “how?” How do you live here where just being slightly different is enough to get you glared down in the street? And then deal with all the craziness that is Kyiv while also dealing with being who you are? But I don’t stop and ask. I just wonder about it. Mostly because I can’t say any of that in Russian.)

So anyway, he’s walking down the street swinging his white cane from side to side, as usual, and hitting a car every few feet. So it’s all CLUNK (building). CLUNK (car). CLUNK (fence). CLUNK (car). He finally gets to the end of the third car in a row and totally loses it. I watch (silently cheering in my head) as he raises his cane above his head and starts violently beating the hood of the third car. CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK! Car alarm. Then he puts his cane back to the sidewalk, and calmly continues on.

Score one for “the little guy.”

For those of you that don’t read Cyrillic, the name of the cheese is “Cheeseburger.” And I was the crazy American giggling in the dairy aisle of the grocery store.

First of all, when Laika and I went for our walk today, we entered a park near home at the same time as a group of children who appeared to be from a local daycare. A dozen kids around preschool age with one teacher. Not weird so far. On our first lap around the park, we saw that the teacher had gathered the kids in a grassy area where they were all running around and being generally kid-like. Not weird yet. As we approached the grassy area on our second lap around the park, I saw that the children had all stripped down to their underwear and were playing some sort of Follow The Leader-type game, led by the teacher (who was, thankfully, still fully clothed). There it is! The weirdness. My first thought was: how embarrassing for those children to be forced to walk around mostly naked in a public park. My second thought was: how many pedophiles are in the park right now? I didn’t have my camera with me, so I have no photographic evidence of this sighting, but I think a photo of that type would probably bring an unsavory new audience to my blog anyway.

Then, this afternoon, I was working at the computer, when a weed whacker started up behind our building. This part was not weird, as I have seen very few lawn mowers in Kyiv - most mowing here is actually done with weed whackers. Then the weed whacking got really loud. Like raise-the-dead loud. So of course I had to go out on our balcony to see what was going on. This is what I found:

Yes, the guy was swinging his weed whacker around at head level to cut down some vines. I don’t know a whole lot about lawn maintenance, but this is not normal, right? And kind of dangerous as well? And notice that he’s right next to our neighbor’s car. Awesome.

And just so you don’t think that all the strange sightings are in Kyiv, here are a couple things from our trip to Crimea:

On a horribly long, un-air conditioned bus ride from Yalta to Sudak, our bus stopped for the 50th time due to “traffic congestion” (a.k.a. Ukrainian driver stupidity) and I looked out the window to see this:

Random. And weird. And then people started posing for photographs with it.

And finally, I put this more in the category of culturally interesting rather than strange, but it is indeed a sighting in Ukraine. (See, I am culturally sensitive.) Shawn and I were out on the boardwalk in Sevastopol in the early evening when it was starting to fill with different gatherings of people. We passed the hip-hop/breakdancing youth group. Then the karaoke group. Then we came upon this group. I could put in all kinds of social commentary here, but I think sometimes it’s just important to enjoy your surroundings and the fact that they’re different than what you’re used to. So according to those rules, this was pretty cool.

As a side note on Ukrainian culture: I find it amusing that in the article they mention that “Live and Let Die” received the biggest reaction along with it’s pyrotechnics display. I cannot even start to explain how much they love pyrotechnics here. Honest to god, there are fireworks in the city at least once a week - often just a few blocks from our apartment, where there happens to be a large open space. Before we moved here, our cat was absolutely terrified of fireworks. Now they start up on, say, a random Tuesday evening, and she doesn’t even flinch.

We did make it down to Maidan yesterday to see the leftover carnage from the concert. (There’s a lot of grass that needs to be replanted…I’m sure they’ll get right on that.) Apparently it was freak-show day on Kreshatik. Anybody with a saxophone, microphone, random carnival game, or gospel to spout had set up camp along the street. I managed to snap a couple photos to share:

There’s nothing quite like a pudgy juggler. He should have shelled out the money for a clown costume - it seems appropriate. When we walked up he had started trying the trick where he would stop juggling and freeze in place until someone dropped money in his bucket. A common technique of street performers in the US, however, here the crowd just started wandering off, confused. We also wondered what the caricatures around his platform were all about. Perhaps if the juggling wasn’t going well, he would do your picture?

Captain Jack here had quite a crowd gathered. I was disappointed for a second time this weekend when I got close enough to see that it wasn’t actually Johnny Depp. The next thing I noticed was the funny little zebra car he was standing next to. (Can you see the tail? I didn’t even notice that part until I uploaded the photos!) I’m not really sure how he and his gear could fit into such a small car. Or how far he could get in it. We listened to him until a couple of police officers showed up and made him stop. From what we could understand, they told him that he couldn’t be in the street. But as I mentioned, there were tons of other performers in the street. My guess is that, as is unfortunately often the case here, the Captain was a little too dark and ethnic-looking for the comfort of the officers. Wouldn’t want the freak show to get too freaky - there are comfort zones to think about.

Other random things seen on our walk: a saxophone player, playing “My Heart Will Go On” accompanied by what seemed to be a karaoke CD; a guy shouting some sort of religious dogma - it appeared a group of teenagers were preparing to beat him up as we walked by; the world’s worse caricaturist; a test of strength game; and two different knock-over-a-stack-of-bottles games (prize: $2 bottle of champagne!). It definitely had the feel of an impromptu carnival. It was, in a word, weird.

So I don’t think I’ve had my picture taken with Santa since I was about 5, but when in Ukraine, do as the Ukrainians, right? As Shawn pointed out, this is technically Ded Moroz and the lovely lady is Snegurochka. The Maidan is currenly covered with Ded Morozes and Snegurochkas just ready to pose for a photo with you…for a fee, of course. We seemed to use one of the high-end operations, though. Hence the “sleigh” and they actually provided the photographer.

If you look to the left side of the photo, right about at Shawn’s knee, you can see Laika’s leash leading away to where our fierce Doberman was cowering in fear. She made it very clear that she would not be entering the sleigh with us, even to sit with some weird people to have our picture taken. She was a sport and walked all the way there with us in the sub-freezing temperatures, but that was where she chose to draw the line.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas (or Happy Holiday if that’s what you prefer)!

So I headed over to our local sewing supply store, “All for Sewing.” (Weren’t the Soviets great at naming things? 95% of the office supply stores here are called “All for the Office.”) Anyway, I got to the store and went to work determining which counter I needed to go to in order to purchase the snaps. Luckily, it was one of the first ones I checked. I peered through the glass to determine exactly which size I needed, and pointed it out to the woman working at the counter. She then proceeded to pull out a box of snaps affixed to pieces of cardboard with a perforated line between each set of 6 snaps. I told her I would take 12, so she tore off that many for me, I paid, and I was on my merry way.

But look at this packaging! How old-timey is that? I feel like this is something my grandmother would have purchased at the general store in town.

I did notice that it says “made in Czech Republic” rather than “made in Czechoslovakia” like I recently noticed all the busses say. Come to think of it, the busses kind of look like they’re from the 1950s as well.