Chapman

We have been in Ukraine for a week so far and it is not as foreign from America as I thought it would be, but it still has alot of things that are totally different.  Here is a quick list of a few things:

• Very few people have cars– everyone uses public transportation.  You get on a bus or “gazelle” which takes you either to your destination or to the metro.
• The toilet is in its own “toilet room”.  The room is just like a tiny little room that is big enough to house the toilet.
• The toilet paper is like newspaper– grey and very stiff.  Kind of like the brown paper towels you get out of the dispenser in public bathrooms.
• The bathroom (the room with the tub– not with the toilet) faucet does double duty with the sink.  The sink is right next to the tub, and you move the faucet over to whichever one you want to use– the tub or the sink.  If you want to take a shower, there is a handheld sprayer over the faucet and you flip a lever and the water stops going through the faucet and into the shower head.
• There are no dishwashers.  Instead, there is a tiny little clothes washing machine where we would normally have a dish washer.  The clothes washer is TINY.  It can only fit two pairs of pants and 4 shirts at MOST.  Tiny.  And there is no dryer– you use a clothes drying rack that is located next to the furnace to let it all air dry.
• No one lives in houses.  Everyone lives in HUGE skyscraper apartment buildings.
• The men are all pretty nondescript– either short and stout or tall and thin.  The girls, however, are all beautiful.  Very tall and thin and they all dress AMAZING!  I LOVE it!  They all have their hair and makeup perfect and they generally wear black leggings, knee or thigh high leather stilletto boots, and knee length gorgeous coats.  They all look like they stepped off a runway.
• It is freezing outside (always in the negatives) but life just goes on– people don’t even seem to notice.  The streets are bustling and people are going about as it if were summer!
• The elevators are TINY.  Only about 8 square feet– 1/5 the size of the typical American elevator.