Day Two: A Trip Back in Time

Maria and Nikolai live in a tiny village about three hours from Kiev. They live in the same house where Olya and her two brothers were born. Maria was born in the house and so was Hanah, her mother.

The drive was boring for Andry and Olya but they slept a little and played on the computers for a good part of the drive.

The Volkswagen van was pretty crowded: the driver and translator in front; Olya, Andry and Ron in the second seat; and Pippa and her parents, Jim and Cara Boyd, in the third seat. An hour or so out of Kiev we left the “interstate” and started driving on smaller roads. Olya and Andry sat with computers on their laps playing Simms 2.

The Ukrainian countryside is idyllic; row after row of tall thin poplar trees forming windbreaks in the gentle sloping, sometimes flat, very fertile fields of corn, wheat, potatoes, beets and other produce. Once in while a cow or two. Now and then a horse drawn wagon with loaded with beets or potatoes. The sky was sunny with wind blown clouds and a temperature in the seventies. A perfectly beautiful day.

From out of the car window as we were speeding along the narrow roads I took photos. The blue sky over the large fields of yellow wheat was an exact replica of the Ukrainian flag: a large panel of blue over an equally wide panel of yellow.

We stopped in one of the mid-sized towns to find presents for the Burlaka family. We found very small version of a Walmart, perhaps more like a flea market of shops side by side with everything under one roof. We decided to buy two cell phones for Maria and Nikolai so they could communicate with Andry after he comes home with us to Miami. Andry picked out the two phones with cameras and we bought a big package of minutes for the phones. We went across the street to another shop that sells meats and bakery goods and bought chocolates for the grandmother and grandfather.

After another hour of driving the road was very small and Andry was directing the driver. He began to point out the places near his parents’ house – where he fished, where Maria worked for ten minutes in the morning and evening feeding someone’s pigs. Soon we would be at the house.