Catching up (12/31 - 1/1)

Sorry, I did it again. Slow internet bad for a few days, but better now. Beyond that, my time has been spent visiting the boys, visiting our friends in Lutugino, and watching a couple of movies (which ties up the computer until I am too tired to write).

For the past few nights, we have been watching season 4 of "24". I also have season 5 on the computer (iTunes) so we'll start that soon. We also have watched a few episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and "John Adams". Honestly, there is not a lot to do in Lugansk, especially when it is so cold as it is now.

But I am home sick today. Just a little bit, but wanted to take the day off to be sure I can recuperate properly and not pass anything around. So I'm sitting here listening to The Blenders' (an a capella group from North Dakota) and Brian Setzer's (the lead guitar and singer from the Stray Cats) Christmas albums. Meanwhile, Nancy, Colin, and Claire are in Lutugino with the boys.

Before I forget, I had a special request on how to pronounce their names.

Ruslan (Руслан) is pronounced (Roose' - lahn)

Valentin (Валентин) is pronounced (Vahl' - en - teen)
The diminutuve Valik (short for Valentin) is pronounced (Vahl' - ik).

So I guess we start with New Year's Eve. I posted one on the 3rd, but it really only went through New Year's Eve since I had internet problems.

Of course, you know we had our court hearing. Here is a shot (a bit overexposed) of the kids right after the hearing. We gave them each a box of candy that seems to be traditional around here. They were all over the place. Valik was very good about sharing his candy with all who were around. That was great to see.


























































As Nancy mentioned earlier, we gave each boy his big gift for New Year's Eve (their traditional gift-giving day). Once we were out of court, the boys immediately asked about their "machina" (Russian for "car"). Ruslan had asked for a specific car he saw in the toy store. However, when we went back to check it out, we thought the dancing truck was way cooler. It has music, flashing lights, pops wheelies, and has better control over movement. We decided he would like that one better, and gave it with our fingers crossed he didn't have his heart set on the other one.


No worries. He totally forgot about the one he asked for and was all over the truck, as was Valik.

You can see the kids ignoring us completely as they played with the cars non-stop. It was the one day it was not difficult to take pictures. Finally something more interesting than the camera.

They even managed to break several pieces before the afternoon was up. But those pieces are just cosmetic, so no problem. All the other kids around watched as well, and got to play a little bit. A fun day.


















































































My reward was to have Ruslan jump up on my shoulders and totally mess my hair up (just like Colin and Claire used to do).

Natasha left on New Year's Eve to take an overnight back to Kyiv to visit her family for the holidays and her mother's 60th birthday. Being the exciting people we are, and having been warned of high incidence of drunks on New Year's Eve, we stayed home and watched several episodes of "24". We did get to see lots of fireworks as nancy mentioned.




































































The next day (New Year's) we layed low during the day. We were also told it was best not to get on the road on New Year's Day as many are still continuing their evening celebration throughout the next day. There are lots of American movies on local TV, but of course they are dubbed in Russian. Mainly we put on a marathon of the Ukrainian version of "So You Think You Can Dance" (I think it's called "Dance, Everyone").

In the afternoon, we had a bit too much cabin fever and so wandered downtown to the main square where there was a huge Christmas tree, recorded music, and of course Spongebob Squarepants. I wanted to explore that part of town more, but as the sun went down (about 3:45pm), the temperature dropped to about 5 degrees (F).








We ducked in to a pizza place (Mario's) for European pizza and all the second-hand smoke we could eat. Really the smoke was extremely thick. The no-smoking law here is in place, but not quite yet enforced. Since they had no English menu, we struggled through in Russian and came reasonably close to what we wanted, ham and mushroom. The one word we didn't catch was raw egg dumped in the middle. Still, it was pretty good, and that + 3 cokes and 1 black tea came to about $8, so you can't complain.

The trip back (about 1.5 mile) was challenging in the cold. Fortunately, there were a handful of stores open, so we could duck in every 1/3 mile or so and ward off the frostbite. A few more episodes of "24"wrapped up the day.