Sheep Guarding Llama

Our first day back in the United States.  Even getting to bed so late, I was awake just after eight.  Once everyone was awake, had coffee, and finally got ourselves moving, we had to return the rental minivan from Enterprise back to the Rochester airport to drop it off.

We went out and got food while we were out to drop the car.

Time to go.  I woke up on my own this morning without the alarm.  It’s a very early morning for us.  Getting up is hard.  I was awake about ninety minutes before Anton was set to arrive and pick us up so that we could head to the airport.

Early morning Anton picked us up, along with his driver, just like he picked us up from the airport when we first came to Kiev, and we packed in and headed off to the airport.  Anton and I in his small car, Dominica and the girls with the driver.  Anton had some transmission problems on the drive, we were lucky to make it to the airport.  It was a near thing.

Getting into the airport was not too bad.  Anton came with us and helped us to deal with some luggage issues and got everything smoothed out for us and we were able to get into security pretty quickly.

Once through security, it was time for some breakfast at the airport.  Then to the gate to wait.  While we waited at the airport, I showed Dominica all of the bombers and military transports at the airport.  She had not noticed how prepared Kiev is for major, rapid, military action.

Onto our flight for a very easy and fast flight to the US.

The food on our flight was really good.  Fish and bulgar.  It was delicious.  Our flight was comfortable and easy.  We are all so used to our long haul flights at this point, even the kids don’t mind them at all.  They are so good at this.

We got to New York super early, way before we were expected to get there.  But we didn’t land.  We noticed, pretty quickly, that we were circling Westchester County.  This isn’t good.

After several hours of flying in circles around the lower Hudson Valley, they announced that due to weather issues, we could not land in New York.  But we had been flying for so long that we were out of fuel.  So we had to make an “emergency” trip to Logan in Boston for fuel.

So hours after we were supposed to land in New York, we were landing in Boston.  In Boston, we got stuck on the tarmac for about three hours.  That was not fun and almost all of the information being given was in Ukrainian so we were never quite sure what was happening.  We thought, for a long time, that we were to disembark in Boston.

Eventually, we got back in the air and flew to New York.  Our nine hour flight ended up being something like sixteen hours!  It was almost eight hours 🙁

Once at JFK in NYC, we got our luggage, rented our car from our Enterprise location that we use every time that we arrive in the country, and we drove ourselves all night long, in the rain, to get up to dad’s house.  We were so exhausted when we finally got to dad’s.

As we drove through Dansville tonight, we actually saw a badger run across the road!  That’s a first.

My new Asus C201 Chromebook was waiting for me at dad’s.  I got it set right up and did some posting from it.

Got to bed at something like four in the morning!

Today is our final day in Kiev.  Our time in Europe is up for this year.  Tomorrow we fly to New York.

I started the day walking into the office. Obviously Dominica was very busy today working on getting all of the final things packed up so that we can fly.  A busy day.

We had a shorter office day today.  Towards the late afternoon, we got rides from the office, got Dominica and the kids, and our whole team drove way across the city to go to a really high end seafood restaurant for dinner as a team.

There was so much great looking seafood tonight.  It was quite hard to choose something.  We also had a huge selection of appetizers that we wanted to try all of.  The girls loved the selection and had a great time.

I asked the chef what he suggested and he said that the octopus was really good that day.  As one of my favourite foods, I could not resist.

The most surprising thing that we found was that Liesl is totally in love with caviar.  She immediately wanted to try it and she already knew what it was.  We asked her and she said “of course I know what it is, it is fish eggs!”  She had all that she could get.

We were very happy that both girls just loved their dinner and had so much fun trying so many different kinds of food.

We got home from dinner and it was a short night, off to bed very much on the early side.  By the time we were in bed, we had just eight hours until we were getting picked up to go to the airport!

Dinner was amazing, it was a great night.  We are going to miss all of our friends in Kiev.

Wednesday.  Walked into the office this morning.  Only today and tomorrow left here in Kiev before we travel back to the United States.  Our time is up.

Nearly available in the office is an ice cream machine.  So for lunch today, after having a croissant, we had ice cream.

I did my regular pre-travel uploading off all of my last images off of my phone today.

After work today, it was late but not ridiculously late, so I swung into the McDonald’s which is just down the street from the apartment and is right on my way home.  They have been asking for it for weeks and it was so easy.  So I brought that home and everyone is happy.  We seem to always get McDonald’s once, just before we leave a country.

Tuesday.  Three days left in Kiev.  I walked into the office again this morning.  Worked for a while.  Then Anton, Max, and I went out for a drive along the river and went to a water front restaurant there for lunch.

Blankets are a common thing in this part of the world at restaurants.  We first encountered them a year ago when we were living in Romania and had taken a trip down to Montenegro for a few days.  It comes, I can only imagine, from a culture that wants to be outside and get fresh air, but is often in colder climates so accomodations have to be made.

Being on the river, of course fish is the obvious choice.

Lunch was awesome.  Everything in Kiev seems to be.  We had such a nice time lounging by the river.  Really beautiful spot and great food.  It was super quiet.  There was a private birthday party going  on at the venue but it was not down on the river so we could not even hear them.  We had the place to ourselves.  There was a priest in the news this morning for having done something involving millions and millions of dollars and we actually ended up parking next to him at the restaurant.  Small world.

Tonight, back home in the evening, I broke up the bottle of sambuca that I had gotten from the grocery store the other day.

Today I ordered my new Google Chromebook.  It is the Asus C201 that I managed to get from Amazon for just $179.  It is being shipped to dad’s place so it might even be there when we arrive later in the week.  I have been really wanting a Chromebook for a long time and I know that I am going to be attending VeeamOn in New Orleans very soon and I need a small, long battery life laptop with me when I do that so that I can stay connected and productive while I am there.  A Chromebook seems like it will be just what I need.  I am quite excited.