Shortly after we got back to Kyiv from our North America vacation in July, we remembered that we live quite close to a beach!  It is about a 20 minute walk to the Dnipra River and the beach area is full on hot days.  I took the girls a few times for swimming and sand playing. 

I will admit the water looked nasty at first, especially one day when it wasn’t just a little brown, but really bright green.  But lots of people were swimming not too far away, so we joined in.  The girls had a blast, and I was glad to have a great summer activity to keep them busy.

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I know the new thing is thinking outside the box, but we prefer inside the box around here…

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For the past year (almost to the day), we’ve tried to experience or at least observe a different culture.  One thing that I’ve noticed is the timing of daily activities.

I usually take the girls out shopping and/or to the park in the morning.  There are never any kids at the park at 10am.  No one comes until closer to 11, and then the park gets full.  We leave between 11 and 12 to go have lunch.  All the other kids and moms or babushkas are still playing.  We have lunch and I put the girls down for naps (well, not Kathryn anymore) by 1pm.  Outside the window, the kids are still playing at the park.  Around 1 they all leave.  We wake up from naps and if we go outside again at 3 or 4, again the parks are empty.  But at 7 or 8pm, when I am getting the girls to bed, all the kids are back outside playing. 

We were out with Katya once and it was almost 7pm, and I said we needed to get home because it was Amelia’s bedtime.  She looked surprised.  I thought 7pm was a normal baby/toddler bedtime.  So I asked her about it.  She said most people have dinner (supper) at 7 or 8, and kids go to bed at 9pm.  Lunch is 1 or 2pm.  I’ve asked the girls that teach English at schools here, and they said the lunchtime at school is 2pm.  I would die!  And I thought waiting until 12:40 at West Campus was hard.

Anyway, so everything is a shifted a little later.  No big deal, it just means we get the park to ourselves sometimes!  And luckily the girls can’t see out the window to see the other kids playing at the park during naptime and bedtime.  I am more of a morning person, and a hungry person, so waiting until 2 for lunch and staying up late don’t go very well for me.  But for any of you night hawks (owls), Ukraine may be the place for you.  Remember, the fireworks didn’t start until midnight on New Year’s, and continued until about 5am.  I didn’t even last until 1am, though.

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My first question is:  Why is there a medal count in the Olympics??!  Its not like a country wins the Olympics.  Obiously countries with more athletes and more money will get more medals.  So what?  The Olympics is about individual performances, not which country is the best.  (I got that from a news story.)

Anyway, I have recently learned that the USA does their medal count different from the rest of the world.  It was on the news here.  USA counts by total medals, but the rest of the world counts by gold medals.  So right now China has an insane amount of gold medals, way more than anyone else.  But the US has slightly more total medals, so there is a controversy as to who should be at the top.  It was a news story here, and basically all the other countries thought the US was just being silly.  I was interested because the more I thought about it I realized I had always seen the “total medal” count.  And it seemed weird to me to see the counting here with countries who had 8 medals, but none gold so they were far down on the list.  The point, though, is, who cares?  Why are they counting anyway?  Its starting to drive me nuts.

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Today was the ultrasound for our new baby.  I can’t believe I’m 20 weeks already.  True to popular believe, we are having a boy!!  I feel like we have to start over since we have all these pink baby clothes and dresses.  I don’t really believe in dressing baby boys in pink. 

At least I feel like Amelia is preparing us a little bit for a boy.  She likes to hit, chase, push, etc, and she is always on the go.  Kathryn did not take the news very well, she has been sure it is a girl baby.  I told her she can still help me wrap him up in blankets.

While we were in Canada, Darryl’s mom said wouldn’t it be nice to have a boy with a Ukrainian last name (Melanchuk), Ukrainian ancestors on his father’s side, born in Ukraine.  We think that is very fitting.

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I know this man is getting a lot of attention, but I think he deserves it, so here I am blogging about Michael Phelps.  At the beginning of the Olympics, I heard he was going for 8 gold medals.  No way, I thought.  I remembered him from the last Olympics and knew he was good, but it just sounded impossible.

I’ve heard about Mark Spitz my whole life.  He got his 7 gold medals before I was born, but I have always heard about him and thought how amazing that was.  I never thought the record could be broken, and didn’t really want it to be since it was such a legend. 

But as I started watching all the swimming races, I realized how amazing Michael Phelps is!  He makes it look so easy, and often is so far ahead of the other swimmers.  The first relay (4X100) was so exciting.  We thought it was over, but what an exciting finish!  7 world records in 8 races.  I just think it is amazing! 

There has been plenty of hype for him on our Eurosport channel.  Except for one of the races (the one he won by only .01 seconds), the announcers were saying he didn’t win, it was a mistake!  I wondered what the American NBC announcers were saying about that race.

One thing we saw on the news was about Michael Phelps’ diet.  He eats 12,000 calories a day!  Yes, that was twelve thousand, not twelve hundred.  For breakfast 3 fried egg sandwiches, a 5 egg omelette, grits, 3 slices of french toast, and 3 chocolate chip pancakes.  A pound of pasta for lunch another pound for dinner and more stuff I can’t remember.  Plus a couple 1000 calorie energy drinks!  That is also amazing, because if you look at the man, you don’t see much (any) fat. 

Anyway, hats off to Michael Phelps.  I think he is an incredible swimmer and it has been lots of fun to watch the races.

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Like everyone else, I am thoroughly enjoying the olympics.  We get it on several channels, but the main one is Eurosport, and everything is live.  We are 5 hours behind Beijing, so we aren’t staying late to watch things.  By 7pm, nothing new is happening.  But coverage starts at 4am everyday, so we always miss something.  I have seen only the last 1-2 rotations of each gymnastics competition, and missed the last two Phelps races.  I guess they were on too early in the morning.  Of course there are always the highlights. 

The Eurosport announcers are British, so we get to hear how the performances are “spot on”, and “brilliant”.  We do see a lot of everything, and definitely not a focus on Americans.  Not a focus on anyone, really.  Sometimes I do wish they wouldn’t show the entire handball match between Germany and Iceland. 

Anyway, there are always a few sports in the olympics that I am just not very familiar with.  Judo is one of them.  We have seen a lot of Judo highlights here.  To me it looks like all you do is trip the other person, they fall down, and you jump on them.  I have seen a lot of tripping on those highlights.

Another one is speed walking.  Why don’t they just run?  It is painful to watch, because I just want them to start running!  They are obviously in good shape, don’t they want to just run?  I also wonder what the real runners think of them.

The cycling around a track where they go really slow until the very end.  I’ve seen this a few times (only in the olympics), and I just don’t get why they are going slow.  I guess they aren’t trying to break the world record.

We’re still looking for the trampoline athletes.

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I got this dress for Kathryn last fall.  I have always loved it, and just recently realized exactly why.  It reminds me of Pollyanna!  I love Pollyanna (and Hayley Mills, hence my love of the name Hayley, which will seriously be on my list if I have a girl).  I loved watching the beautiful dresses Pollyanna wore, and always wanted to wear dresses like that.  I think it is the drop waste and little pleats and pockets that make me think of Pollyanna.

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Amelia keeps getting cuter and cuter.  This is a picture of her in a dress up outfit from Aunt Bobbi. 

If we mention “go”, Amelia will go grab her shoes and stand by the door.  She says “go, go, go!”  And she brings you her shoes anytime she wants to go outside, and says “shoe”.  She also loves saying “bye” and “duck” (which for her is “guck”).  Anything with feathers is a “guck”, and just about anything else is a cat “dat”.  “Dat” also means that, which she says all the time for anything she wants and doesn’t know the word.  “Bop” means cup, but she also uses it for a few other things, like diaper and pop (the sound, not the drink, because the drink is actually called soda where I come from).  “Bubble” and “eye” are two of her favorite words.  She pokes at everyone and everything’s eyes.

Amelia’s favorite game with Kathryn goes like this:  Amelia grabs something of Kathryn’s, shows it to her, and then runs as fast as she can away, throwing the thing as soon as Kathryn is about to catch up.  Amelia thinks this is hilarious and fun, Kathryn not so much.   If Kathryn pushes Amelia, she smiles and laughs like it is a fun game.  Today Amelia had Kathryn’s little stroller so Kathryn tried to grab it away.  Amelia kept holding on and was smiling like they were playing a fun game.  Kathryn, of course, was screaming that it was “mine!”, so Amelia started saying “mine”, too!.

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While visiting Seattle we turned on the talk radio in the car one day.  The subject being discussed was a possible new tax on grocery bags.  We only listened for a couple of minutes, so I don’t know the details like how much the tax would be.  However, I am assuming that since it was talked about on the radio it is a “hot” topic.

I’d heard people talking about buying grocery totes, or reusing the plastic bags they get at the grocery store.  Many people would think that countries like Ukraine are “behind” in certain areas.  But on the grocery bag issue they are way ahead.  A plastic bag costs 45 kopeks (10 cents) at the grocery where I shop.  So everyone uses and reuses their bags.  Or you can buy a little sturdier straw type of bag for grocery shopping.  We used those in Romania on my mission.  Or I’m sure you can use whatever you want.  I usually take my backpack to the grocery store so I can use my hands to push the stroller home.

This just makes so much sense to me.  I know I have used way less plastic bags, once I got used to taking my own to the store.  10 cents really isn’t that much to pay for a bag, but it is just the culture to not waste.  I want to remember that when we go home.

While on the subject of paying for things that used to be free, here is my public restroom (port-o-potty) experience from yesterday.  We went to a huge park in a city outside of Kyiv, and I took Kathryn to the potty.  There was a line of port-o-potties, and I saw two ladies at the far end, assuming they were charging money for toilet paper.  Since we had our own, and we really had to go, we just went in and did our business.  When we got out, one lady was coming up to me, a little upset.  So I asked her how much, and she said one grivna.  Unfortunately, although I had my backpack, I didn’t have my wallet with me (it was with Darryl).  I looked for any money but I had none and tried to explain that.  She was quite upset, but I didn’t know what to do so we walked away.  I was a little riled up because paying for the public restroom is still new for me.  But by the time I got back to Darryl and Amelia, I felt bad that I was adding to “The Ugly American” image.  So I got some money and took it back there.

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I want to preface this by saying that this post is not based on fact.  These are just my observations of our neighborhood.  And they may not be interesting to anyone but me.

In the mornings when I take the girls to the park there are often other kids with their moms or grandmas at the park, too.  I can only remember one woman that was there with two children.  Not that I cared, I just observed that.  But then if we were out in the late afternoon (after school got out), I noticed that many of these women had an older, school age child.  Like several years older. 

Then last week I saw a family that lives in our building.  They have a little boy Kathryn’s age.  One day I saw that they also have a school age girl (I’d guess 7 years old).  Well, last week I saw the whole family with yet another child, at least 10 years old!  I don’t know why, but this is fascinating to me!   I’ve noticed this enough times that I do think it is a trend.  I also understand that it makes sense for people here.  Maybe when I start looking more pregnant I will be fascinating to them, having three children in less than four years.

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