Friday

Greetings.  I was informed by my bride that it is my turn to write a blog.  So, I guess I'll share my Friday with you.

I first woke up at 1:45 a.m., to doors slamming and loud voices.  Out of bed, and downstairs, I find 3 of the boys eating "dinner".  They had gone to the Russian Sauna with Andrey and Steve (with Hearts for Orphans).  This is often done when someone of importance is visiting.  The Ukrainians view it as a real treat.

Anyhow, back to bed until 5:50 a.m. when my alarm went off.  At 6:00 I woke 2 of the boys.  They both protested a bit, but I chalked it up to the fact that they only had 4 hours of sleep.  As it turns out, none of the boys had school Friday (for some unknown reason), so we all could have slept in if someone had just told me.

It snowed about 6 inches during the night, so we shoveled snow.  The challenge with this is that they don't have a snow shovel.... just a regular pointed shovel, and a broom.  What a huge pain in the butt!

One of the boys wanted to go shopping for boots, so I loaded two of them up and off we went.  We got there at 8:15, and the store doesn't open until 9:00, so I decided to drive to the hardware store to look for a snow shovel.  I have my doubts about finding one in this country, since I saw a lot of home made shovels being used - a piece of plywood (12"x 24" +/-), attached to a wooden handle.  So off we go.  The challenge here is finding the store.  I followed the boy's directions for 40 minutes, driving around in circles, until I finally gave up in frustration.  I then drove them until they told me to stop, and off they went.

Now I realized that I had no idea where I was, or what direction the house, or any familiar landmarks, may be.  Have you ever been alone, behind the wheel, in a foreign country, without a phone, unable to speak the language, and completely lost?  I made it home at 10:30 - 2 1/2 hours after leaving the house to drop off the boys.

Fortunately, the rest of the day was much more enjoyable.  We went to Oskars for lunch, ran a few errands, and relaxed at home for awhile.

I have been craving onion dip, so I made a batch from some cottage cheese that we bought from a woman in the bazaar, and the closest thing they have here to cream cheese.  I was sooo excited to eat something normal!   Unfortunately, the cottage cheese here doesn't taste like the cottage cheese in the States, and the cream cheese here is nothing like our cream cheese (I'd give $100 for a bar of Philadelphia cream cheese right now).  So long story short, it SUCKED!  One bite and I was done.

The fun part of this experience (always looking for the silver lining) was that Karen decided to make the potato chips - from whole potatoes.  In addition to snow shovels, and a million other things, there are no unflavored potato chips here.  You can buy fish flavored, cheese flavored, tomato flavored, onion flavored, etc....., but no regular chips (I'd give another $100 for a bag of Lays chips right now).  The home made chips were wonderful.  In fact, they ended up being our dinner.

We were in bed at 9:30, and watched Dexter (season 2) until 11:30, when it was time to call it a day.  Sleep well everyone!

God Bless,
Bill

Check this out -  http://youtu.be/s80BUIllkCE