MoldovAnn

We spent most of the weekend packing. Good grief, we have a lot more stuff than I realized. Amazing how much one can accumulate in 3 years time, especially when I was supposed to be here just temporarily! Our kitchen is back to state it was in when I first moved in – 2 forks, 2 spoons, 2 knives, 2 plates, no glasses, a few mugs, a couple pots. And to think – that was sufficient back then! As much as I hate packing, I LOVE unpacking. It’s like Christmas, only I get to relive the wonderful memories of each item as I unwrap it. Next weekend the fun part will begin!

The excitement of the weekend was when we discovered that someone had hacked into our wireless network and used up our internet limit for the month in the span of 3 days. Thank goodness we noticed the lights on the router going crazy late Friday night (or was it early Saturday morning) when neither of us was using the internet – we pulled the plug right away and cut the bandit off. We popped over to the internet company’s nearby office on Saturday, and they gave us a print-out of how to change the password for our wireless router. When we got home, we discovered that the screenshots they gave us do not in the least bit resemble the website, and after horsing around for an hour, we finally gave up and decided to go without wifi for the next week until we move.

I took a break from packing and internet fiascos yesterday to go to a huge mall with some American friends. Wow, I didn’t realize we had those kinds of places here! It’s huge, with an indoor ice-skating rink, bowling alley, movie theatre, gigantic grocery store, and a ton of over-priced speciality shops and boutiques. We did some window shopping, had a coffee, and decided to head home. Then the fun began. I swear, only Ukrainian drivers can manage to create a traffic jam in a freakin’ parking lot. Which reminds me, I saw a complete and total disaster of a traffic jam at a McDonald’s drive-through window the other day. How on earth? Only in Ukraine… I can hardly begin to describe the chaos of our particular traffic jam – it was utterly ridiculous. I finally ended up squeezing around a bus that just wasn’t going to move, and got out through the entrance. But we eventually made it home – after spending about twice as much time in the car as we had spent in the mall itself. Not a trip I plan to be repeating.

Tonight we are pooped from all the packing, the cat is busily inspecting all boxes and bags, and I’m looking forward to the week. How wonderful to look forward to going to work!