This is Aaron on our deck

Popping a bubble

This begins the pictures of our trip to Kiev (as I wrote about below). This pictures is us on "Maidan Nezalezhnisti," which is the area where the Orange Revolution took place last November-December.

Statue of Shevchenko, the Ukrainian national poet

Us on "Maidan Nezalezhnisti," which is the area where the Orange Revolution took place last November-December.

This is the Kuzmin family, which is the family we lived with when we lived in Kiev two years ago. From left to right, that's Olga, Larisa, Ben, Kourtney with some crazy crying baby, Sergei, and dog Basya

Aaron with the Kuzmin's dog, Basya. He noticed Basya first of all, of course, and had fun playing with her.

This is a picture of the "Petrivka Rinok," which is a market in Kiev where you can buy basically anything. This is a shot of part of the book/cd/dvd section. This market is huge, and is a cultural experience to visit. We bought a bunch of dictionaries and other things. This year there are a lot less pirated things than there were last time. Ukraine is getting more honest, I guess.

DON'T FREAK OUT! Aaron broke out in some kind of rash while in Kiev, but it didn't seem to bother him at all. It just came and went. But it was kind of unnerving to see our little baby with spots all over him.

We finally bought Aaron a little Ukrainian national outfit thing. We thought of getting one two years ago when we were here but couldn't find one small enough. This one fits pretty well, and will for a while. Now he just needs an occasion to wear it to...

Aaron enjoying his first morozivo/morozhenoe

Mmmm

Ben and Aaron in front of another church in Kiev (it was raining so we didn't go any closer)

People don't really walk in the rain. Instead, they wait until the lets up. This is inside a little covered hallway entrance to a church complex, with (rainy) view of the great sophiski sabor down the street

While In Kiev, we took a boat trip along the Dnipro... and here we are

Selves-portrait

There was music playing on the boat, and Aaron got his groove on for quite a while, much to everyone's delight

More dancin

These are the other three people in our group, from left to right Scott, Stephanie, and Per.

One of the main tourist attractions in Kiev is a place called the Lavra, which is a collection of churches and things. Monks built their homes underneath the ground and would come up to worship here. There are a few main churches, this is one of them. This is our whole group, from left to right: Stephanie, Victor (one of the directors), Scott, Kourtney/Aaron, Ben, Julia the tour guide, and Per

This is a view from the side of the lavra. Lots of churches.

And here is the view a little to the right, which includes the giant soviet steel statue "Rodina Mat," which means something like "mother land mom."

us

escaping down the road, but stopping to pick up a stray rock no doubt

knocking on the door of the church (no one answered)

me and aaron

walking up to one of the mail churches in the lavra

and back again

This is our bedroom where we stayed in Kiev. It was somewhere between a college dorm and a hotel. There was a small fridge, which is nice. But at the same time, there wasn't any toilet paper or soap. When Ben asked if they had any, they looked at him like he was insane.

Snacking on some pretzels in the bed

Ben and Mihailo, our host dad, on the balcony

When it rains, the water gets stuck on the balcony so we sweep it off. It's great though because even where there is just a tiny bit of water, Aaron points, squaks, and goes to get the broom to clean off the water.

This is our deck. Here Aaron is shaking out his bib. The big truck is a toy that they have here that he plays with.

Busted

Well, sorry everyone but I just tried to download Hello (the program I need to upload pictures) and it wouldn't let me. I'm not sure if they don't allow downloads or if something just happened weird. But it won't work. So I'll try again at another internet club and see if I have any more success.

We went to Kiev this past weekend and had a great time. We drove there in a van, Aaron without a car seat, but everything went fine. Aaron did well on both drives and only slightly annoyed everyone else, or as far as we could tell.

We got to see the Kuzmin family, which is the family we lived with when we were in Kiev two years ago. It was really nice to see them. They haven't changed too much, despite a few major illnesses on their part. They had fun watching Aaron play with their dog but then he got fussy at the end and got his shoes on and did everything he could to let us know it was time to go. They probably only thought he was kind of cute by that point.

Ben has come up with a cold of some sort. Hopefully he'll be able to recover quickly and soonly. Aaron is still kind of sick, but seems much better. He got some kind of weirdo rash all over his body when we were in Kiev. It wasn't itchy and didn't seem to bother him at all but it sure was funky looking. As usual, all the babushki freaked out when they saw him and everyone came up with their own versions of where the rash came from. We're starting to get weary of Ukrainian women having heart attacks because of our parenting. It seems like Aaron is always doing something wrong according to them. Somehow it got spread to another girl in our group (via her host mom, probably via a neighborhood mom) that Aaron was sitting on wet sand the other day. Sitting on the ground at all is next to fatal, in case you weren't aware.

I left Aaron sleeping and Ben relaxing trying to get better at home. Probably by now Aaron is awake and Ben is groggily chasing him around. I should get back to them.

Sorry about the pics! Hopefully we'll figure out how to get them to work.

Ukraine, arrived and well

HELLO! We are here in Lviv, Ukraine, after a very drawn-out flight from SLC (via Detroit, Amsterdam, and Kyiv).

In short:
All is well. We are building a comfortable life here. Our host family is great; they love Aaron and he loves them. Lviv is beautiful--much more European than our usual Russian style. We are studying Ukrainian and it is going fairly slowly but is still fun.

In long:
When we got on a tiny crop-duster soviet airplane (that no doubt had duct tape somewhere holding important parts together) in Kiev after 20+ hours of traveling, we looked and each other and said, "We must be crazy." Aaron was very upset to have to wake up in the middle of the night (which was mid-day local time) to switch planes, we were sleep-deprived with yuckied airplane stomachs, and still had hours to go before our destination. But, we continued on, and things have gotten nothing but better since then. Our host dad Mihailo was there to pick us up at the airport, and he along with Viktor (one of the program supervisors) greeted us with smiles when we walked out.

When we got back to our place, we met the rest of our host family: Daria, Oksyana, and Ihor. Daria, the mom, is a pediatrician; Oksyana, their daughter, lives there with her husband Ihor. They are expecting their first baby in October. We live in a four bedroom (which we would have never dreamed of) upstairs of a house a little outside of the city. The living conditions are great. There is a little boy who lives on the bottom floor (he's Daria's nephew) who Aaron plays with occasionally. There is some sand in the driveway they play in. Our neighborhood is very friendly and safe, with good air, to boot.

Aaron understands Ukrainian and Russian now, at least as far as we can tell. He really likes Daria and Oksana both, whom he stays with in the mornings when we have class. It is really hard for me to be away from him but I keep reminding myself that it's not for a long time, and that it will be good in the long run for everyone. Even if Aaron never actually speaks a word of Ukrainian, the language is helping him.
We trust our family with Aaron. Of course there are some things they do that we don't agree with that we let them get away with--like letting him watch tv and eat cheesecake--but oh well. I figure there are some things that we have to be willing to sacrifice as the price for dragging our baby across the world. Another one of those things is a good night's sleep. Since he's still not used to the time, he wakes up a few hours after going to sleep. So we bring him to bed and I nurse him to help him fall asleep. Sometimes he goes back to sleep right away, and sometimes he just kind of talks to himself for awhile. One night, it was so funny, he had woken up and I was trying to get him to go back to sleep, when he sat up straight and proclaimed, "Bubbles!" Hehe. He had, just that day, started saying bubbles. We brought some with us and he likes to play with them on the balcony. He asks for them quite often. I decided that "bubbles" is going to become an acceptable Ukrainian word (at least in a small group) because our family all says it, along with seven-year-old Danusa, one of Daria's grandkids.

Aaron has had a bit of a cold, but Daria just got out her little stethoscope at the first sign of a cough and checked out his lungs. She said they sounded okay, but his snot was thick and green and had a nasty congested sound in his cough so she prescribed some antibiotic syrup. Some of you might be worried about Aaron taking weird medicines, but don't worry: this syrup is the same kind I used to take when I was a kid. I know because I tried it.

One more thing about Aaron before I move on: He loves borscht! Daria made it for us and he couldn't get enough of it. And, much to our delight, Ben and I figured out a possible reason why it's always written "borscht" in English: that's how you say it in Ukrainian! And the soup is (supposedly) originally Ukrainian! So that makes so much sense now. We were so blind before, back in the olden days when we only spoke Russian. {haha}

So, yeah, we are studying Ukrainian. It's definitely fun, but weird. Ben is doing a great job of just jumping into it. I had a hard time in the beginning being convinced that I really needed to speak it. Everyone understands Russian, so it's so easy to just speak Russian instead. And it's crazy because there are so many words taht are the same in both languages that sometimes it's hard to tell which language somebody is speaking. But basically the way that we speak Ukrainian is by speaking Russian with Ukrainian grammar as well as we know it, but substituting the Ukrainian words we know for their Russian equivalents. As time goes by, we learn better Ukrainian grammar and more words so our speech is getting slightly closer to actual Ukrainian, but I have a feeling that even by the time we leave we will still be speaking a hybrid of the two. Ben and I have a suspicion that our host family speaks a hybrid most of the time to us too, so we hardly even know what real Ukrainian is. (Maybe nobody does...)

This city is beautiful. There is a definite Soviet-feel to everything but much less so than the other Ukrainian and Russian cities we have been to. One thing that we've noticed is that people are considerably nicer here. Not sure why, but oh well. That's just what we've noticed.

The food here is just as I had expected, although it is much greasier than I remembered. Since there aren't microwaves, their way of reheating things is re-frying, with a new slab of grease and everything. I have gotten so used to eating such plain foods: plain oatmeal, salad with little or no dressing, etc. Here I don't think I've been served anything that wasn't either creamy or oily. Milk is fresh and yummy, but basically cream. Oh well.

Okay, I'm anxious to get back to Aaron so I will end this now. I will try to keep posting every once in awhile. Next time I will try to post pictures. I think I can, I will just have to download hello. Hopefully it won't be a problem. In the meantime, know that Aaron is still incredibly cute. :)

Aaron, after having just taken off his shoe