Lost and Found in Kyiv

"Большое спасибо!" The taxi driver laughed waving away my thanks as I got out in front of our house. Still, it didn't seem like enough. I wanted to give him a hug, bake him a cake, award him a kiss! Still, he seemed happy enough with his obvious hero-status and his fare + tip, so with a happy sigh, I gathered up my three large bags, found the hand full of keys that open our gate and two front doors, and gratefully entered our new home in Kyiv.

To understand my relief, you need to rewind a few hours. After a breakfast of banana pancakes and raspberry sauce (compliments of our first forays into the local markets), the kids and I boarded the bus to school.

I had permission to join them for the trip to finalize all of their in-processing for their first day. The trip wasn't too bad--about 40 minutes including stops to wait for and pick up other kids along the way. At Pechersk International School (PSI) we were met by name at the front door. Young Man and Darling Daughter were swept off to get their schedules and orientation from the secondary school while I stayed with Funny Guy in the Primary school to meet his teacher and then take care of additional logistics. After depositing Funny Guy with his teacher, I signed the kids up for extracurriculars (including playground club, Minecraft, and sports for Funny Guy; Yearbook and Russian for Young Man; and rock climbing for Darling Daughter), put money on their lunch cards, and got their PE uniforms (a huge bag of clothes for each child, including sweat pants, sweat shirt, T-shirt, and more). At last, I was finished. I had planned to maybe explore a bit of downtown Kyiv before heading home, but laden as I now was with the three heavy bags of uniforms, I decided just trying to navigate the metro system home would be adventure enough. I plugged in our home address into Google Maps and set off.

The walk was surreal. I live here!

Everything is strange and also strangely familiar (from my time in Russia more than 15 years ago). My ability to read most signs is exhilarating.

The familiarity of the conversations as people pass, talking on their phones or to each other, gives me hope that I may be able to navigate this place successfully in the not-too-distant future. The Ukrainian text and speech is disorienting (so close to Russian sometimes that I'm not sure if I just don't understand or if it is Ukrainian).

Still, the experience was exciting (the pictures are less than mediocre because I was juggling three large bags and my hands were freezing, but I figured some bad pictures would be better than no pictures).

When I got down into the metro station, I realized my phone didn't have cell service so I had to resort to the old-fashioned method of looking at a map to figure out where to go. Without anywhere pressing to be, it wasn't too bad. I figured out how to feed a 20 UAH bill (about $0.75) into a machine on the wall to get five trip tokens (which look like toy plastic money), then navigated my way onto the correct train.

I needed to make one transfer, so I got off and looked for signs to the other line. I couldn't find any.

I'm not sure if I missed them or if there wasn't an actual transfer path (the two stations are about half a mile apart, so either option is possible), but after wandering around for awhile in the station labyrinth of shops and halls, I came out above ground at one of the most famous monuments in Kyiv! It was beautiful. The whole area was.

I would have enjoyed it more, but when I checked my phone to calibrate where to go, the battery was at 2%. Normally, my phone lasts several hours, so I was dismayed to find my phone dying the minute I opened it up, especially since I'd been relying on it to know where to walk home once I arrived at the nearest metro stop. I only got enough of a look at the map before it gave up the ghost to orient myself toward the next metro. Oh well, I thought, this will be an adventure!

I set off in what I hoped was the right direction, and felt gratified when I saw the big M marking a metro stop up ahead. No problem. I got this!

The problem was when I got off at my final metro stop. Each stop has several entrances that can point you in various directions. Without a map or anything else to navigate by, I didn't know which exit to take. I knew our house was only about a 10-15 minute from the metro stop, but in what direction?

I picked one randomly and set out into the softly falling snow, convinced that I could just grab a taxi if I couldn't find our street soon. I enjoyed the walk immensely, finding a beautiful park and lots of interesting shops, but I didn't find our street. Eventually, I stumbled upon the U.S. Embassy. Oops, it was fun to see something I recognized, but that meant I'd definitely chosen the wrong direction. Time to try a taxi. I approached the security guard and asked (in Russian) whether it was possible to catch a taxi on that street. Not likely, he replied. Better luck up on the main street, he added, pointing. 

I set off keeping an eye out for taxis. It wasn't long before the first one came along. No problem, I thought, ready to thaw my nose and toes safe and sound at home. "Saratovska?" he grimaced, "Нет." No? Huh, I was stumped, weren't taxis supposed to go where ever you told them? OK, I'd just try another. The next driver didn't even deign to answer me, just shaking his head and rolling up the window to drive away. Was I saying the street name wrong? The next time I tried a few different possible pronunciations but was met with another firm no. Deciding to try another tactic, I went into a grocery store and asked if they sold maps of the city. No. Did they know where Saratovska street was? No, but maybe the security guard would. Indeed he did but he whistled under his breath and said, "Ooohhh, это очень далеко" (it's very far), you'll have to drive, not walk. In answer to my query about where to find a taxi, he said, "On your phone of course!" Of course. How could I be so silly. :) Even though the result was disappointing, the whole exchange was kind of fun. Here I was making myself understood and understanding all in Russian. It made me want to rush home and study more. 

I went back out to the street considering my options. I could find my way back to the Embassy and try to get a hold of My Man, but I didn't have my passport and didn't have a badge for embassy access yet. They probably wouldn't let me call anyway and I didn't want to interrupt him. I decided to retrace my steps to the metro since I knew I'd gone the wrong direction. Maybe if I were closer to home, I'd have better luck with a taxi.

And that is exactly what happened, eventually. After four more tries (eighth time is the charm!), I got a driver who was willing to try. He waved me in, assuring me, "No problem" (in English, no less) when I gave him the address. He pulled into traffic, then turned and asked me for directions. I couldn't help laughing. "Really, I have no idea, I'm completely lost," I assured him. In response to his blank stare, I repeated the assertion in Russian--his English turned out to consist of about five words. "Aaahh," he said, pulling over again. As I braced myself to get out and try again, he assured me he could find it, he just needed to look it up. It took him a few calls to dispatch and a few minutes looking up routes on his city map (no gps?!), but he eventually found it and pulled back onto the street. I smiled to myself as we backtracked more of the route I'd walked--I hadn't even been close! And then at last, he pulled onto our street and I saw a familiar store, then the park, and finally, our house. It's amazing how quickly a place can become home. Only a few days in country and this strange house has become a haven. "A big thank you!" I said, tipping him generously so that the grand total of his fare and tip came to just over $2. And it was over.

I could have avoided the whole adventure by simply grabbing an Uber ride home from the school, but I'm glad I didn't.  Really, there's nothing like getting lost to help you get to know a place.  In fact, one of the best consequences of not having a car here right away, is being forced to explore the public transportation options, being forced outside my comfort zone. It is a little harder, but there are so many options (most for pennies a ride), and now I know--even if my phone dies and I am hopelessly lost--I can find my way home, eventually.

And even though I made it home later than I'd anticipated, I still had time to hurry and clean up, do laundry, prep dinner, shovel the walks, and write up this story before the kids got home.  Although I hope to start work soon, it's nice in the meantime to have the time not to worry too much about getting lost as I try to figure out how to navigate this new adventure.

Slices of Life: Summer in Paradise

Funny Guy's final field trip was to Sun Center waterpark in Lamphun, a quarky waterpark/amusement park that is still partly under construction. But these first graders didn't care about the semi-disarray. They jumped right in and splashed and laughed the morning away. 

After lunch, they got to try out several of the rides. Funny Guy's favorite was the mechanical bull. Though it threw him both times, Funny Guy "yeehawed" and whooped and even held on with just one hand as it lurched around. Definitely a great way to end the year.

On the last day of school, there weren't any sad faces on these three!  We celebrated with icecream on the way home.

One of our first summer outings was a bike ride over to the soccer field at Payap University. We played soccer, watched clouds, read, and rode bikes until we were completely drenched in sweat. Then we rode home to shower off and go swimming. Definitely a great first day of summer break.

Another fun outing was lunch with friends at Nic's Restaurant across town. It's the world's greatest restaurant where you can get great food, gluten free cake, and smoothies and the kids can play for hours on the bamboo boat, climbing tower, swings, or trampoline.  Definitely a great place to meet up for a play date!

Darling Daughter missed friends already, so invited them over for swim parties and sleep overs right away. I knew I'd be starting work soon, so we crammed in as many as we could that first week of summer.

I also spent lots of time outside with Funny Guy, walking Mochi, biking around the neighborhood, or walking to the pond to feed the fish. Sometimes when it's so hot, it's easy to get lazy and stay inside all day, but we always love it when we get outside.

Our first Friday Fun Day was supposed to be a trip to Sticky Falls, but I was over-confident with my navigational skills and didn't look up directions. We'd been there once before and I was sure I'd be able to drive there again. I took a wrong turn, though, and by the time we realized it, correcting it would have taken almost 2 hours. Luckily, the kids were good sports and decided we could try out this place instead. 

It was great. We rented tubes (though the creek was too shallow to do much more than float lazily), hunted for crawdads, caught fish, and built a rock dam. We picnicked and read. It was an idyllic summer afternoon, and by the time we headed for home, the kids were thanking me for my mistake.

My Man hasn't been able to do much paragliding here, but there was one day of magic in June. He invited his whole section from work to come up and the wind cooperated perfectly.

He took off and flew, eliciting oohs and aahs and gasps and applause from the large audience below.

We could see a great storm in the distance, but it never got too close and the wind was enough to keep My Man flying until sunset forced him to land.

My Man took the boys to the archery range a few times across town. Since they already have the bows and arrows, it's only a few bucks each time.

There aren't many places that we can walk or bike to safely from our house, but there is one icecream shop that isn't too treacherous a bike trip and the kids absolutely love to go. They have some of the best icecream in town and the bike trip makes you almost feel like you've earned it.

The Consulate hosted a concert by a symphony quartet from Stanford University that My Man had to emcee. We brought the kids for the cultural experience and everyone enjoyed it. Unfortunately, however, no one was inspired to start practicing the abandoned violin at home.

One of our next fun outings was to Huay Tung Taow lake for a picnic lunch and swimming. About halfway through we were joined by a friendly bird who begged chips and fruit for the rest of the morning.  Young Man and Funny Guy also caught a couple crabs and pipe fish for their aquatic habitat.

And then it was time for me to start work!  I was bummed to be starting just a week after the kids got out of school, but so excited to be starting work at my first "real" job--not quite fair considering I worked at our business for years and also as a copyeditor and proofreader, but I'd never worked at an office or with a face-to-face boss! 

I get to commute to and from work with My Man and most days we get to eat lunch together. I love what I do as the Consulate's Management Assistant, helping with a large variety of projects. I organize events, help out with grants, work on environmental issues, organize English classes, and more. It's definitely busy, but it has been working out well and I am so happy I made the choice to start working.

Just a typical grocery shopping trip. Luau anyone?

Happy Father's Day My Man!  The kids made breakfast in bed, awesomely creative cards, and very cool presents, including this awesome rope dragon we got at the walking street market. 

 

I already wrote about our awesome 4th of July weekend and some of our other Friday Fun outings, but here are some more of our highlights from July:

Since I didn't work Fridays over the summer, we continued to have fun outings every Friday. For one, Darling Daughter and I attended a Consulate community activity to an interesting temple and lunch. It was a rainy day, but it was a fun outing and the hot chocolate was amazing. 

Another Friday Fun Day was a trip to the umbrella factory where we got to watch how they make the traditional fans and umbrellas here, from making the paper to the bamboo skeleton. They also have several artisans there who paint the umbrellas and fans, or anything else you have, including the clothes you are wearing!  Darling Daughter had her shorts painted, Funny Guy got a sword, and Young Man and I had our phone cases painted. It was great.

When Minions came to town, we decided to organize a big outing to go and had almost 50 people show up!  It was seriously one of the stupidest shows ever, but it was fun to get together with friends.

We discovered an airsoft place not far from our house and have gone a few times, including this time for one of Young Man's friend's birthday parties. Seriously can't think of a better place for an airsoft battle than a jungle full of abandoned cars, well, unless it is a place without mosquitoes and 90% humidity. . . .

 

And then it was already the end of July and practically the end of summer (well, the end of summer vacation anyway, since it's really always summer).  Even though the kids didn't want it to end, they all admitted that it was a great summer, full of fun and adventures and just enough relaxing. They had swim lessons twice a week at our pool, Friday Fun Days and weekend adventures, and lots of books, movies, bike rides, bug hunts, board games, and Studio C the rest of the time. Darling Daughter dabbled with baking and produced some stellar desserts. Funny Guy started a YouTube channel teaching kids how to duplicate his awesome Lego creations, Young Man invested in a soccer goal for our front yard, and they all enjoyed walking and playing with Mochi (our adopted dog for the summer). 

All in all, I'd have to say the Thai summer of 2015 was a resounding success.



Settling into Life in Paradise (January)

We arrived to Chiang Mai on a rare rainy day (it generally doesn't start raining until April) in January. That didn't stop Funny Guy from begging to check out the pool (surprisingly cold during the cool season!!). Our neighborhood is absolutely beautiful and so is the pool.

There is even a tiny little café that serves hot chocolate (luke warm, but I guess that is plenty hot enough in Thailand!). Perfect for after a day of rainy swimming!

Our house is beautiful with hardwood floors throughout, beautiful landscaping, and a nice open floorplan. We don't have a dishwasher, but we do have a washer & dryer (none of which are normal commodities here).

Our first attempt at going to church didn't work as well as we'd hoped. We thought we hired a taxi driver, but he didn't show up. Finally we tried to just hail one from the road, but they don't stop out where we live so we started walking toward a busier street (more than a mile away). Amazingly a nice lady stopped and offered us all a ride. She didn't speak any English but was super nice and My Man got to use his mad skills and talk to her all the way to church. Once there, we found that although there are a couple other English speaking families, it will be a very different experience from church in Korea where we had a huge English branch. This is a small Thai branch with a good effort at translating. (I teach Primary with a missionary who translates for me into Thai; Sacrament meeting is translated by missionaries into English and we can listen with headphones; etc. We sing songs in Thai and English at the same time, whichever we happen to speak.)

Luckily church is downtown and we didn't have too much trouble getting a ride back home on a red songtaew (truck with bench seats along the sides in the back). Our neighborhood has lots of coconut trees (which Ana loves to collect and try to crack open) and a little fish pond where we sometimes go feed the ginormous catfish. It's a bit far from the center of town, and we have only found one other family with a few kids (Sam's age and younger), but it is definitely beautiful.

The kids started right into school Monday. Since we didn't have a car yet, I got to ride the van into school with them. It picks up kids from another family in our neighborhood, then some older kids in another neighborhood on the way in to school. The school is wonderful. It's a small Christian school (the oldest international school in Chiang Mai). The teachers seem great, there are several sports and after-school activities, and the campus is nice. The kids all thought it was great and transitioned easily to their new classes. 

Young Man started right into football (soccer) and Darling Daughter started track & field (she found out she loves the high jump!). Young Man's first game was that week! I really wanted to go and support him (and needed to pick him up anyway) but had a tricky time getting transportation worked out. Finally I got a driver who would come out to pick us up. The problem was he didn't know where the field was, and neither did I. I had a map and we finally got to where he thought it was, but no one was there. By then we were more than half an hour late, so I knew that couldn't be the right field. I talked him into trying one more time and eventually we did find it. I didn't realize that it was the only game of the season that would be at such an obscure location (usually the games are at international schools!) or that except for the tournament at the end of the season, parents don't generally attend the games. But we were glad to finally make it there to support Young Man. And the girls' teams played first so we were able to watch the whole game.

He even got to play goalie for awhile when the team's regular goalie got hurt. He did great even though he hasn't ever played goalie before.

I thought it would be easier getting home than getting to the field, but again we couldn't seem to find a taxi. It was getting late and everyone was hungry, so I ordered some unidentifiable rice noodle soup and everyone loved it. And eventually, we all made it home. Who knew going to a soccer game could be such an adventure.

The consulate community is great about setting up activities to help you get out and explore and get to know each other, and they had one set up for our first week in town. It was a trip down south to a ceramics factory, followed by lunch and a quick visit to a temple there. It was great. We got to see them making and painting the vases (all by hand!). There was a great section of "seconds" (imperfect pieces) that we browsed and I splurged and got a beautiful little tea set for under $5.

The next day, the kids had a short day of school. Darling Daughter had track & field practice so I picked up the boys from school and took them with me downtown Chiang Mai. Sometime on our way out here, my laptop screen got broken and I needed to get it replaced. We'd heard the best place was at the top of the moat (the main downtown Chiang Mai is a giant square surrounded by a moat of water).

Since there are tons of temples (wats) in that area, I thought we'd walk from the school over to the computer place, stopping to enjoy some of the wats along the way, then go back to pick up Darling Daughter after her practice. It turned out to be a much longer walk than I'd realized (from off the map on the top right side to the top left corner of the moat) but the boys were good sports and really enjoyed exploring the different temples. Especially when I promised we could take a tuk tuk back to the school afterward. We only saw four (out of more than 300!), but the ones we saw were great.  We stopped at a little hole in the wall restaurant near one of them and had the best Thai food we've ever had (still hoping to go back!).

And then I got pneumonia. Well, I got the flu first, thought I was getting better, and then it turned to pneumonia. The next few weeks were spent with me in bed, wishing we were out enjoying the most beautiful weather of the year in the most beautiful tourist location in the world! Instead, I was sick in bed, we were trying to work out logistics like getting a car, figuring out where to shop, homework, and so on, and My Man and the kids did their best to carry on without me. I don't recommend it: pneumonia in general, and pneumonia when you are settling into life in a new country in particular.

Near the beginning of my bout of pneumonia, our first shipment arrived! I had mixed feelings when I looked out and saw the truck. It was fantastic to get our stuff so we could settle in and feel at home, but the pile of boxes was completely overwhelming with how sick I was. It took a long time to unpack and organize and make our house feel like a home. Thankfully, My Man is very patient, because variations on this view greeted him every time he came home from work for at least a week!

I think the kids' favorite part of my being sick was when My Man would take them out for dinner and they got to ride in a tuk tuk (basically a motorcycle rickshaw). It is definitely their favorite way to travel.

Before we moved to Chiang Mai, My Man heard about a paragliding launch just a few minutes out of town. He was super excited to get back into flying since Virginia had been such a disappointment in that respect. Unfortunately, Chiang Mai isn't going to be a good place for flying either. Apparently, the launch has been abandoned because winds aren't good enough. Still, we decided to check it out.

I was still sick with pneumonia but we were all sick of being stuck inside and I figured the change of scenery might be nice. It was. The launch was really pretty. We enjoyed the sunshine and nice views, and the kids enjoyed chasing lizards and bugs. It's actually a great launch and if My Man can find anyone else to fly with it would be a convenient place.

So life in Paradise is already going full-swing, if off to a somewhat rocky start. You know things are going to be OK though, when you go in to tuck your little one into bed and find this.