New bikes, Easter, and room

Home sweet home: note the permanent fixture of pickles on our table

Our easter basket!

Old Soviet dinosaurs, spring and the city on the hill

Bike King

Mary ready to ride!

This one is for our parents

Just a little mix of life these days. Slowly but surely, we're morphing into Ukrainian ways...dyeing the hair red, hanging out in parks far longer than necessary, going to the plazas instead of for long walks and hopping on and off those trolley-busses like nobody's business! Thats right, we can squish by any sturdy old babushka, under the arm of the smelliest man, and around the delicate stance of the tallest vixen. The pumping dance music outside the local grocery store is now an excuse to lean against the wall for five minutes, rather than getting worked into a frenzy by the crowds of youth. We cruise through the bazaar making all the vendors giggle at our broken ukrainian, but they know precisely what we want (i.e. the makings for extreme-muesli...that's right Matth - muesli by the kilo, full of all sorts of delectable treats).

But there's failure too...I (Mary) tried desperately hard to track down a skills building center for women that had been trafficked abroad, but was led in circles through the block neighbourhoods, knocking on all the rickety doors and asking all the wrong questions. Unfortunetely, its common practice to a) not label street addresses, and b) hang up the phone when you can't understand the person on the other line. Makes for a tough time. Well, there's always tomorrow!