lately lyala has been working on her essays for school, so i have been trying to get out of the house and explore around kiev by myself. so i went to some of the touristy parts of kiev that i have already already been but i have not taken pics of. so here are some more pictures for yall. we will start at andriyivskyy, a cobblestone street that is the center of kiev's tourism. there are a lot of craft shops and other sites.
this is on the of the many statues to bohdan chmielnicki at the bottom of andriyivskyy st.
St. Andrew's church








at the top of the street is Ukraine's Foreign Affairs building


















next to the foreign affairs building is St. Mikail's Monastery. this complex was built recently in the 1990s on top of a 11th century monastery that was destroyed by the soviets to make way for a government complex. well that never happened so when the ukraine ssr became independent they rebuilt a church.












in front of st. mikail's monastery there is some statues that you see here:
princess olga of kiev in the middle
the cyrillic brothers: st. kyril and st. mefody on the right
some dude with a shepherds hook on the right












down the street there is yet another orthodox church/monastery call St. Sofia Monastery. in street in front of it there is another statue of bohdan chmielnicki with st. mikail's monastery behind it.














St. Sofia at sunset.











and then i was tired from doing all this walking for yall so i went home. until next time ...

Hurricane Leonard has left the coast of the Dniper. There were not many bars left untouched in Kiev by this force. There were at least three hit a night. The winds started last Wednesday and ended this Friday. Hydropark, our huge island park, hit and so was Chernigiv, Lyala’s home town. But all in all, the city is in good shape and everyone recuperated nicely after a couple of days.

All is good, except the red do-it-yourself bomb. Her frame cracked, something that I cannot really fix. The welder wasn’t too expensive though. About as much as breakfast while we waited on it to get fixed. The weather here is starting to cool down. Still hot in the day but it gets in the 50s at night. I guess fall is around the corner and my southern ass will experience something else it ain’t never experienced, a real winter. Oh yeah, our cat-dog meeshka, caught a house mouse last night. Lyala has been praising him all day with treats(liver sausage) and cooked food (kasha with bones and beef tips). Well I hope to catch yall on-line or hear from you in email. Later ...

Good News everyone: NO VISA ARE REQUIRED FOR USA, EU, and CANADIAN CITIZENS for less than a 90 stay here in ukraine now. that means that yall that are planning to come and visit only need a valid passport now. this cuts out a lot of hassle and an extra $100 for you. more incentive to come and visit! since i am doing a post i might as well find a picture to post. lets see... here i am trying my hand at taking some pics of random people. i want to do more of this, but it seems to be difficult, maybe the reason i want to do more of it. this is a picture of a cute little ukrainian and her mother.
btw, from now on i am going to try to post the pictures in the post itself like this. or after the post, so there is a more natural flow to the blog and some people seemed to be confused about the pics because they missed the actual blog posting. send me comments and tell me what you think about this approach and which one you like the best. posting then pics or pics then posting?
thanks, and off to pick up leonard at the airport, our first visitor from charlotte!

Taras Shevchenko, the most famous ukrainian poet/artist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Shevchenko

my newly refurbished grill

my optional strawhole installed on my new grill.

lyala trying to cool down next to the fountain

even the crow thinks it hot! he was just walking around with his mouth open like this.

meeshka and lyala swimming

meeshka swimming out into the river with lyala

man its been hot here. i also heard that in the N & SC it has been hot too. i had to hear all yall complain about it, so i figured that i would return the favor. anyways, my soccer team got eliminated from the european cup :( But i did meet a couple of new people. one of them being a trombonist photographer, so we have a lot of talk about, if we could speak the same language, ha! na we get along fine. last time i mentioned the river that we go to, well this time i have a picture or two. i also just got back from the dentist in chernigiv getting my front grill replaced. its a little sore but it looks good and feels better than that last one. all for about $200, and about 12 hours in the chair for two sessions. wanna see? well here ya go!