Lay of the Land

Yes I realize it's Monday and I'm not my usual "on top of everything" but yesterday was a long, long day and today was our first work day so I had to prepare for that. 

 Sunday morning breakfast - my eyes were as wide as a child's on Christmas when I first saw it - it was a spread that you'd get in a really, really fancy hotel back home.  I thought to myself, surely this must be the weekend breakfast buffet but as a I discovered this morning, this is their breakfast buffet.  Of course I would prefer just to eat the eggs and bacon, but I have been making an attempt to eat off the healthy end of the offerings.  Fresh vegetables seems to be very common (and tasty) here so I'm going to make the most of it even though the only times I've had vegetables for breakfast before is when they're part of an omelet vs. separate on the side. 


After breakfast we met to go over some security details and logistics and then we were taken for a tour of the city.  The first part of the tour was showing us where a 24-hour market is along with a post office, and how to add minutes to our cell phones (let's hope I remember all the steps).  Twenty-four hour businesses seems to be a very common practice - markets, pharmacies, even flower shops are open continuously.  I am curious as to what drives this practice because I don't think even HEB is open 24-hours.  You could classify markets here into two groups - the big HEB / Randall kind that have all the fruits / veggies and such and then the "corner store" markets (local, small) almost like a 7-11 or Sac-n-Pac but without the gas pumps.  Both kinds are 24-hours. 

We were given a lesson on taking the metro and it is very deep underground, very quick, and very crowded.  I am relieved to find out that the team I am working on will walk to work - about 10 blocks (a fifteen minute walk), all the other teams will be taking the metro.  As I said, it's very deep underground and you get to the platform via these long escalators, it felt like three football fields in length and it was quite un-nerving as it moves quickly.  You need to hold on.

Parking is a premium in Kyiv so people park where they can - literally.  As you can see, they park on the curb and this is a weekend view; I was surprised when I went out today how many more cars are parked on the side-walks.  In an effort to curb this practice, nice barricades (usually with flowers) have been added all around the city to prevent side-walk parking.

By the way, the lady in the "No-Parking" picture was our city tour guide - she walks quickly and Kyiv is a hilly town and we had a teensy weensy bit of trouble keeping up with her.  The tour was three hours and my feet were killing me when we finished but it hit all the major highlights and kept me from taking an afternoon nap and messing with getting over the jet-lag.  I'll cover the tour and city highlights in detail on other blogs as a few of us plan to re-visit them on a more leisurely pace on the weekends and I can get better pictures.

No blog is complete without a picture of my meals (yes breakfast is above but can you have too many?) This restaurant was like a Luby's, you pick what you want and the total gets tallied at the end.  All I'm going to say about this meal besides yumm (that is going to be a recurring theme I think) is that this meal, complete with beer beverage and a bottle of water, was $6.50 - where's that in Austin?



Buy Local - does that sound familiar?  We finished off the day yesterday with a team meal, probably the last for a while as we start our assignments.  Water is not provided in restaurants like at home, you need to request and purchase water and there are two options - "no gas" is like water back home, plain, flat, and "with gas" which is carbonated water.  Aline (from Brazil) asked for no gas water with her dinner meal and was brought an Evian bottle of water.  She was shocked when she saw on her bill that it cost 33 Hryvnia (local currency equal to about $4.75).  When she told me outside I said to her, just like back home you have to buy local.  You see I went to the market earlier that day and bought a local Ukranian no gas water (tastes just like bottled water back home) - same size bottle - for 5.5 Hryvnia (about $0.75), I saved a total $4.  Who knew!