I would like to start out this post by telling everyone that lyala got her first acceptance letter from duke university. we will know from yale in mid january and from chicago in march. congrats to lyala on being accepted to duke's mba program, one of the top programs in the world!

we had a little adventure the lately. the story is that i cannot stay in ukraine for more than six months at a time. well that time was drawing near since i had come back from bulgaria. i knew that all i had to do was register, not a big deal right?! well, if you remember my story about the car, you know that the bureaucracy is crazy here. to make a long story short instead of registering, it was easier for us to go to another country and back. well we chose poland, because it is easy for lyala to get a visa there. the train ride is about 18 hours to lublin, not bad. lublin is a eastern polish city that has some revolutionary ties, off the beaten path, and it is not as far as warsaw.

we got to lublin about 4am, a real pain because we had no pole dollars(what i call them) so we had to wait until 9am for the money changer to open, so we slept a little in the train station, cause the weather was real bad outside (snow and lots of wind). we couldn't even go to the bathroom! it cost 1 pole dollar. glad we didn't have to go really bad. i was thinking that we got off at the wrong place, but that train didn't depart until 22:55 as you can see on the board.

after we got some money and took the bus to the old town we were able to get some coffee and some polish mexican (surprisingly very good) for breakfast. we felt a lot better after this. the old town in lublin is from the 14th century. it had some interesting buildings, but the museums that we found that were open were mostly lame. the old town was built as a walled city, with two walls and a castle.there was a museum in the castle, again pretty lame except that it had a judge's desk with a burnt handprint from a demon! i couldn't get a pic but the legend is that in the 17th century the court systems were so corrupt that a rich merchant bribed a judge to give him an inheritance that was suppose to belong to an old woman. the woman stated publicly that the devil would have passed better judgment. well that night a group of demons came and retried the case and ruled for the old woman, at this point he put his hand on the desk and burnt his handprint into it. and if i know devil handprints, this was real!
anyways, we gave up on the museums and went to get lunch. all the food that we had in lublin was really good! so that is what we did the rest of the time. kinda walked from shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant. had a good time and some good food until nightfall.
our train left at midnight, after a long day we were ready to get some rest! overall it was a good trip.

besides our travels, i am really excited about ashley and spas coming to visit. i cannot wait to show them around kiev. hopefully there will be more visitors to follow!
merry christmas!

i posted when it was fall so it only seems normal to post when it is winter. it is now winter here! we went downtown last night and maydan(the central square) and when we can out of the subway it had started snowing(to bad i didnt have my camera then) and didnt stop until this afternoon. this is a view from behind our new apartment.








for those of you that did not know, he had to move quickly, so we moved into a temp place, and now we moved into our new non-temp place. so we are finished moving, now we are cleaning and unpacking. i dont have much more to say now,
here are some more pics.


this is a ptitsa (for those of you that know russian or "The Clockwork Orange")














meeshka in his fur coat, eating snow