WE SEE “TRANSFORMERS” IN RUSSIAN, THEN GET THE CALL WE’D BEEN WAITING FOR.

Friday, July 6, 2007

In this very abnormal situation, we’ve begun to settle into a normal routine. I wake up at four or five, turn on CNN or these days more often BBC, make a pot coffee, take a shower, sit down and write on the blog for an hour, take an hour walk in a different direction each day, stop at some bakery/mini mart or coffee shop for a breakfast tidbit for the kids, get back to the apartment around 8:00 am, read emails or write more blog until Pippa gets up at eight or nine (she stays up later than I with the children); the children get up around ten, play Simms on the computer, I give them a hot breakfast twice a week, usually German pancakes Ukrainian style. That means adding cherries or cherry syrup. Other mornings Pippa fixes their breakfast of cereal with fruit: cherries, apples, bananas or pears. Vasilly and Yelana show up at 10:30 and we take off to explore Kiev or spend the day in the car going to sign documents here and there, almost always –– there.

Yesterday we followed our typical morning routine. Then we were picked up and driven to the center of town and had a Ukrainian lunch at a very interesting restaurant. Kiev is filled with many interesting restaurants: we’ve yet to have a bad meal.

Even what we eat in restaurants has fallen into a pleasant routine. Borsch always (Olya, Andry, Yelana); verenky (everybody); shshlyk (shish kebob, Ron and Andry); Chicken Kiev (Pippa); Kvas (Olya and Andry––a fermented bread, non-alcoholic drink also sold in large yellow vats all over the city); bliniki (crepes with apple inside and chocolate outside, Ron––but “I’ll just have a bite of yours” from Pippa–– but in fact Olya takes the whole plate for herself and Ron gets one bite only).

After lunch we walk around the corner to the remarkable Kyiv cinema on Chervonoamiyska street. We like this cinema a lot. The ambience is very different than American cinema houses. Not nearly so plastic. For example the lobby is classy, much like American movie palaces in the 50s. There is a large bar that serves the best coffee we’ve had so far; beer and liquor is also sold along with all the popcorn & candy stuff and you sit at nice glass topped tables in a restaurant atmosphere. Just off the lobby is a great internet café with a zillion computers and its own coffee bar. Olya and Andry love the computer room dedicated to video games and they’ve got this routine down to perfection.

We had just finished watching “Transformers” in Russian, sitting and having coffee at the glass topped tables, the kids in the internet café, when we get a call from Vlad. Our court date has been set for next Wednesday at 2:00! Incredible! Wonderful!

The rest of the day whisked by as if a great load had been lifted from us. We breezed through the giant MegaMart and loaded up with groceries. Then went home and cooked bratwurst.

The kids were in a great mood and played hide and seek and “tickle” with me all evening until I was exhausted. Andry’s really getting into the swing of this and is becoming almost as relentless as his little sister. But it’s hard to match Olya’s skill; her fingers are like little steel augers boring into your armpits.

Pippa ignores all this frenetic wrestling while she punches away at the computer: catching up with work, adding to the blog and sharing the day’s events with her mother. Every five minutes she looks up and tells us to be quiet, we’ll wake the neighbors and get kicked out of our cushy apartment and stuck into some unrenovated Soviet one.
Nobody listens.