We have been living in Ukraine for almost a MONTH now! Time has flown and I really need to update! OK, so since I last posted about what was going on, we moved to another apartment. Trevor’s apartment was WAY far from anything fun and WAY far from the metro, so we moved to an apartment right in Kiev (before we were in the outskirts) and right next to a metro stop so we have full access to the city. Before we had to take a taxi for forever to get to the metro which was ridiculous.
We moved into this new apartment and we are the first to ever live in it– it is a brand new building and they are still building all the apartments, so there are only like 8 apartments rented in this huge apartment building which is GREAT! We don’t have to be quiet and we don’t have any noisy neighbors. It is really really big so we have tons of space and it is very beautiful. Trevor’s apartment was totally a bachelor pad– ick. But this one is lovely and I really like it. We are on the 12th floor and have a great view. This is the view from our bedroom window.
Right below us is the “renic”– the market. There they sell all kinds of staples like bread, cheese, meat, milk, etc.– the things that go bad quickly so you don’t want to buy a lot of it in the store. You just go down to the market and get it fresh each day. Way cool! Olya takes me everywhere so today I decided I had to face Ukraine by myself so I went to the renic ALL ALONE! I am so proud of myself! OK, so this is how it all went. Since there are so few people in this building, you have to call the attendant on the first floor to send the elevator up to you. If someone forgets to send it back down to the first floor, then no one can use it. Well, we waited and waited and the elevator never came so we had to use the stairs– Jace climbed 12 flights of stairs. What a champ. So then we got out and walked to the renic (which is right behind our building) and I found the bread store (each store is dedicated to its specialty item, so there is a bread store, a milk store, a meat store, etc.), I walked in and said, “Sdrasvoitsa. Dva butone, pajalsta.” (I can spell it all in Russian, I just don’t have a Russian keyboard so that is how it is phonetically, I guess.) He knew exactly what I said, he got me two of the breads I wanted, I gave him the money, I turned and said, “Dos Vedania,” and left! I was a total pro! Here is a pic of the renic from our bedroom window. Each of those long buildings has a bunch of little shops.
The weather is warming up now. The snow is melting and yesterday was my first day seeing the sun! We have had blue skies for two days now and it is beautiful! Everyone has a totally wrong idea of the Ukraine. It is totally European and they have anything you could need. Our friends Max and Natalie took me to the huge supercenter a few days ago and it was awesome. It is like a Super Walmart (but bigger), and they have such a variety of everything. Like, they have a 200 foot aisle full of the most amazing and exotic juices, they have 30 different types of rice, 50 different types of grains (like buckweat, spelt, anything!) 40 different types of gourmet cheeses, etc. I could just spend 6 hours wandering the aisles looking at everything. I will bring a camera next time so you can see what I am taking about. The only thing I don’t like is that you can’t really buy things in bulk. Everything is sold in 1 kilo packages. I am used to buying 20 lbs of rice at a time, or 25 lbs of flour, but you can’t do that here. I bought a 5 kilo bag of flour, and Natalie thought I was nuts. haha They also don’t have certain things that I really need like cornstarch, shortening, and random things like that. Anyway, they also have premade food that you can just buy in the frozen food section and you can buy palmeni! I LOVE PALMENI!
For breakfast, people eat grains. They don’t generally eat cereal like Americans do (there were only even a few to choose from)– they eat various types of oatmeals. Lala and Lyosha (Jace’s friends) eat buckwheat cereal for breakfast each morning with a little milk and honey. For lunch, everyone eats soups– the traditional one is “Borsch” which is a beet, vegetable, soup. We always have it– as soon as it runs out, Olya makes more. It is WAY good. Then for dinner, they have various things, mostly vegetable based like this salad that we had yesterday called Oliveyea. Olya made a huge thing of it yesterday. It is hard boiled eggs, chicken breast, carrots, potatoes, pickles, and corn. Everything is cooked until it is soft, and then mixed together, then you get a serving of it and mix it with sour cream. Try it. It’s sooooo good.
This is turning into a way long post, so I will post more later!
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