FROM: Banbury, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
ABOUT ME: Living the highs and lows of life in the adventurous pursuit of God Himself and of who I'm meant to be as the Bride of Christ.
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Thursday, January 10, 2008,8:45 p.m.
WELCOME TO KIEV!!
Welcome to Kiev!!
These were the first words we heard upon our exit from the baggage claim area of the Kiev airport. I'd like to say that it was the first words we experienced in Kiev, but this would be untrue. Actually, it would be a blatant lie, since the first communications we received were that most of us had at least one piece of luggage that wasn't finished visiting Frankfurt and had been taken off the plane. Utterly exhausted from the billion hours of travel, we then filled out forms and at least 100 of us from our flight (without exaggeration) tried to talk to the ONE airline representative dealing with the situation. And when I say "filled out forms", by the way, I actually mean we filled out ONE form, we just filled it out again and again as we were told over and over that this wasn't right or that wasn't right. Yeesh. What a mess. Our official "Welcome to Kiev", received from my conductor who was waiting just outside the baggage claim area to greet us, came about 2 hours after we exited the plane itself. I must say I was incredibly glad to have my dad on this trip, who dealt with all the luggage stuff; I simply sat down on the floor and tried to keep the people around me calm and amused (and tried to stay awake).
We then bussed into the city centre, and were escorted to our places to stay. We were put up in apartments around the city, all within walking distance (ours nice and close) to the mission's headquarters. Four of us ladies stayed across the street from the opera house in what used to be an Inturyst Hotel (used to be where you had to stay if you were traveling through Soviet Russia). This is the front of our lovely residence (DTES friends, welcome to the Ukrainian Empress, simply sans bugs - which is a GOOD THING):
(Funny story about the front of this building, by the way. As we were passing it on one of our few bus outings, our tour guide told us to look to the very ugly, terrible buildling to the left of the bus. We did, and four of us surprisingly said, "Hey, we live there!")
This next shot is taken from the front of the opera house - look across the street and you'll see the entrance to our alley. Our door is down the alley and around the corner.
And our alley and doorway:
To be truthful, it was not a bad little place to stay at all. I wasn't kidding when I said there were no bugs. I did not see one bug at all (it might have been too cold for them to live outside, and too heated for them to live inside!). One of the couples on the trip had a mouse, but we didn't even have that. Our place was old with an elevator that sounded like you were plummeting to the ground every time you got into it to go either up or down (I was occasionally forced to sing very loudly to cover the noise. "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away....") and with a shower that took literally 15 minutes for the water to heat up, but it was warm and cozy and very, very clean.
These were my "roomies" for the 10 days we were there (Pat, Eunice, myself and Charmaine):
Once we had all claimed our lost luggage and found our accomodations while in Kiev, we had a quick dinner at the mission and then experienced what turned out to be the most welcome part of the day: being horizontal for the night!
These were the first words we heard upon our exit from the baggage claim area of the Kiev airport. I'd like to say that it was the first words we experienced in Kiev, but this would be untrue. Actually, it would be a blatant lie, since the first communications we received were that most of us had at least one piece of luggage that wasn't finished visiting Frankfurt and had been taken off the plane. Utterly exhausted from the billion hours of travel, we then filled out forms and at least 100 of us from our flight (without exaggeration) tried to talk to the ONE airline representative dealing with the situation. And when I say "filled out forms", by the way, I actually mean we filled out ONE form, we just filled it out again and again as we were told over and over that this wasn't right or that wasn't right. Yeesh. What a mess. Our official "Welcome to Kiev", received from my conductor who was waiting just outside the baggage claim area to greet us, came about 2 hours after we exited the plane itself. I must say I was incredibly glad to have my dad on this trip, who dealt with all the luggage stuff; I simply sat down on the floor and tried to keep the people around me calm and amused (and tried to stay awake).
We then bussed into the city centre, and were escorted to our places to stay. We were put up in apartments around the city, all within walking distance (ours nice and close) to the mission's headquarters. Four of us ladies stayed across the street from the opera house in what used to be an Inturyst Hotel (used to be where you had to stay if you were traveling through Soviet Russia). This is the front of our lovely residence (DTES friends, welcome to the Ukrainian Empress, simply sans bugs - which is a GOOD THING):
(Funny story about the front of this building, by the way. As we were passing it on one of our few bus outings, our tour guide told us to look to the very ugly, terrible buildling to the left of the bus. We did, and four of us surprisingly said, "Hey, we live there!")
This next shot is taken from the front of the opera house - look across the street and you'll see the entrance to our alley. Our door is down the alley and around the corner.
And our alley and doorway:
To be truthful, it was not a bad little place to stay at all. I wasn't kidding when I said there were no bugs. I did not see one bug at all (it might have been too cold for them to live outside, and too heated for them to live inside!). One of the couples on the trip had a mouse, but we didn't even have that. Our place was old with an elevator that sounded like you were plummeting to the ground every time you got into it to go either up or down (I was occasionally forced to sing very loudly to cover the noise. "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away....") and with a shower that took literally 15 minutes for the water to heat up, but it was warm and cozy and very, very clean.
These were my "roomies" for the 10 days we were there (Pat, Eunice, myself and Charmaine):
Once we had all claimed our lost luggage and found our accomodations while in Kiev, we had a quick dinner at the mission and then experienced what turned out to be the most welcome part of the day: being horizontal for the night!
