MoldovAnn

We had a great 4th of July here in Kyiv. Since it actually fell on a Saturday this year, we got to celebrate the great day on the actual day even!

We loaded up the car with friends and tons of food, met up with some other friends in their car, and proceeded to drive back and forth across Kyiv for a couple hours. That wasn’t the fun part, believe me, but it took us awhile to find an acceptable spot for our cookout. The folks in the other car wanted to go to a beach along the Dnipro River in the southwest part of Kyiv, but when we got there we were all disappointed and disgusted with the mounds of trash everywhere. Igor put it rather mildly – “not appetizing.” So we headed back across town to the forests on the northeast side of Kyiv. The spot was perfect – no one else seen or heard, almost no trash, and the added fun of getting to test our Toyota 4-Runner off road – woohoo!

The Americans cooked hamburgers, the Ukrainians cooked shashlik. Everyone ate the too-die-for brownies that Eilene made (although I noticed only the Americans were excited about the also too-die-for peanut butter cookies). We grilled fish and veggies. We had salads. And of course beer, wine, juices and other drinks galore. We played frisbee. We laughed until our sides hurt watching Bazooka the dog try to bury her stick somewhere close to China.

We dragged ourselves home late in the evening, tired and content. It was a really great day, and best of all that we could spend it with friends.