Moving back to Besarabka was stressful: we haven't got much stuff, but for some reason it occupied way too much space - you should've seen the van we were riding in, how packed it was, and me in the midst of it all, with Marta asleep on my tit, all stuck in an unexpected traffic jam. You wouldn't have seen any of it, though, because of the van's fancy window tint. A family straight out of a Kusturica film.
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My computer's charging cable broke Saturday night - and I nearly went crazy, positive that I'll be arriving to the wonderful adsl connection at Besarabka without a computer. But thankfully, there is an Apple store in Kyiv (across the street from the stadium on Velyka Vasylkivska), so Mishah went there and bought a new cable today.
(Velyka Vasylkivska seems to be the only new, post-Soviet street name that no one in Kyiv feels comfortable using - most people still call it the old way, either Krasnoarmeyskaya or Chervonoarmiyska: Red Army Street.)
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The speed of my internet connection back home is amazing: so fast, it scared me at first! I can't imagine having spent four months on that terrible dialup, managing to accomplish anything at all!
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Khreshchatyk is so noisy, but it's nice for a change, civilization.
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The weather is horrible, no one's prepared for the cold, there're still plenty of people wearing summer shoes, etc, even though it's colder now than it was on December 31 last year.
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Marta is so not used to my father, she starts sobbing every time she sees him. We don't know what to do about it - any advice? Is she always gonna be this timid or is this the age thing? Poor papa... (She's not scared of the cat at all, however. Quite the opposite...)
Wow, you have an Apple store in Kyiv now? That's beautiful. As for the dedushka, she'll get used to him, as she'll get used to everything else. It just takes time. There are periods where the little ones are more scared of new faces. The more she sees you hugging him, the faster she may decide that he's okay...Good luck!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a little boy, I remember that I was very sensitive to other people's smells and odours...and that's weird but that is what determined my attitude toward people. When my Mom dropped me sometimes at her parents' place, I didn't like smell of sauerkraut, Grandpa's tobacco and "guess whatever else" there...I was crying there non-stop. Grandpa and Grandma were ignoring me crying completely. It made me crying even more...
ReplyDeleteNow I can say that I miss those smells, I miss my Grandpa who passed away a few years ago. Every time visiting Grandma I smell the same sauerkraut, the same other odours, and they bring me back to those times when "trees were big" and "prices were small" ;).... and when life seemed to be long, easy, and full of joy only
Welcome back to Kyiv ;)