I went to Red Square last night – so beautiful. I had forgotten how powerful and dramatic it is. I also walked along Old and New Arbat streets. Didn’t recognize either in the least. There is a huge book store on New Arbat that I _think_ I recognized, but it sure didn’t look like the grey drab place I frequented in 1992. If it’s the same store, I thought there was a huge post office across the street, but that is now a giant shopping mall. I’ll have to ask someone if there used to a PO around there, maybe I just didn’t get to quite the right spot.

In 1992, we couldn’t make direct-dial international phone calls from anywhere in St. Petersburg (where I was studying). Instead, we had to go to the post office and order a phone call, then sit down and wait until your number was called over the PA system. Only the announcements sounded just like the Peanuts teacher, only incomprehensible Russian garble instead of incomprehensible English garble. I missed more than one call opportunity because I couldn’t understand when my turn was called. And it wasn’t just my bad Russian – I often asked a local to help me and more often than not, they also couldn’t understand a thing from that PA system. I did meet some nice people that way though, waiting for my phone calls.

Anyway, in 1992 the only city from which direct-dial international calls could be made was Moscow, and when I would be in town I would often go to that giant post office that was somewhere near a giant Dom Knigi (House of Books), wait for an open phone booth, and happily dial away. I remember the first time I called from that post office. For some reason, it wasn’t an automatic two-way connection. I could hear my parents but no matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t figure out how to make them hear me. They guessed it was me calling from Russia and they talked for a few minutes to me; it was so nice to hear their voices but soooo frustrating to not be able to speak to them. It was only later that I somehow figured out that I had to push a button when my parents answered the phone so that they could hear me. It was absolutely incomprehensible to me why someone would make a call and then have to push a button so the other party could hear them – why would you make a phone call and not want them to hear you? I think maybe the prices were different or something if it was a “one-way” call, I don’t remember. Just another one of those little things that is huge when you are clueless.

I’ve got two packed days of meetings, but hope to squeeze in some social calls, too. I learned not too long ago that the daughter of my dear friend Alyona (from Moldova) is living in Moscow, with her Russian husband! I hope to see her tonight and get caught up on a lot of news that I seem to have missed.

I wish my wonderful husband was here with me. I love to travel with him, love to listen to his history lessons. As excited as I am to be back in Russia, I’m also looking forward to going home to Kyiv, to my Igor and our new apartment. Speaking of which, we finally finished the move last weekend. Good grief – all I could think was that I came to this country three years ago with two suitcases, and now we had SEVEN carloads of stuff to move. Even scarier is that we seem to have filled up an apartment more than double the size of the one we just moved out of. How the hell did all of that fit in our two-room apartment?!

The cat handled the move relatively well. She hid most of Saturday, and then Sunday followed me around all day, meowing in a way that made me think she was crying “I want to go home!” Sunday night she seemed more settled in, doing her evening exercises of sprints around the apartment. She also seems to enjoy the vast array of hiding places; Igor couldn’t find her at all this afternoon, and she appeared only when he opened the refrigerator door. What’s really funny is that he said she turned right in the hallway as if to go into the old kitchen, instead of turning left into the new one. I guess animals also develop their own habitual patterns!

Off to meetings.

Today is a working day for us here in Kyiv, even at a place called American Councils for International Education (we are taking Friday off, though). We’ll spend this evening with at the Campsey’s, with dad and some other Americans. This will actually be my first Thanksgiving dinner with Americans since I’ve lived in Ukraine, and it will be Igor’s first “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner - turkey and all!

I am very thankful for so many people and things. First and foremost for my wonderful husband; I couldn’t ask for a better partner in my life. I am thankful for my family - parents and siblings both by blood and by marriage. I’ve been thinking about mom a lot lately, and I am especially thankful for the last conversation I had with her 2 days before she passed away. It was an “unscheduled” phone call, I’d had an “unknown” caller on my cell phone and thought I’d better check with my parents if it had been them calling on a Thursday about something important. Nothing had happened, thank goodness, and it was a really nice conversation with just my mom. I am thankful that my last memories of her are so warm. It’s hard to believe that it’s been over three years now since I last saw her and hugged her.

I am thankful for my wonderful friends, all over the world. I am thankful for my great colleagues and a job that I love.

I am thankful for ice cube trays and tomatoes picked from the vine and homemade wine and the internet and public transportation and warm clothes and sunny beaches and my iPod (OK, my dad’s iPod until I replace the one I killed) and decaf coffee and my cat and warm fresh bread and blue cheese and podiobooks and chocolate-covered halva and so very much more.

Walking around the town this evening, obliviously speaking English with 2 colleagues, I realized we were being followed by a drunken man complaining extensively about us. He seemed to know exactly 2 English words - “America no!”. He bitched that we should be speaking Russian, to which I very much wanted to respond, in Ukrainian, that in fact we ought to be speaking Ukrainian! Oh my, how my wonderful husband has turned me into a Ukrainian nationalist! The drunk eventually seemed to get bored of failing to get a rise out of us, and went on his way. It made me sad, though, especially after a few weeks of being so proud and excited about America right now. I know I shouldn’t pay attention to the ramblings of an old drunk man, but still, it’s hard to not want to respond, or to try to talk him about why he feels as he does.

The hotel has BBC and CNN, and I thought it would be fun to indulge in English-language TV. Wow, if this is indicative of what is usually on, I sure ain’t missing much. Booorrrinnng! I can’t believe how long they just discussed the new Guns ‘n Roses album. Is there really nothing else going on in the world?

I enjoyed unpacking most of it today - I love getting re-acquainted with my things! And it’s fun to organize and arrange our things in a new way, in a new place. I am soooo in love with “my room” (at least I’ve dubbed it “my room”!) - a small room with a fabulous huge new wardrobe and a reall dresser! I haven’t had a dresser or a nice wardrobe in 4 years, and I’m so excited to have enough space to arrange my clothes the way I like to.

We also are now the proud owners for our first set of living room furniture. Igor had heard about a good deal on a 3-piece cream and brown living room set. He went to check it out, brought me some pictures of it (since I couldn’t get out to see it myself), and when we decided to purchase it, he arranged for the delivery straight to our new place. So I actually hadn’t seen the new furniture until Friday, when we got the apartment keys. I was excited to finally see it, as Igor had been very enthusiastic about it - and it is, after all, our first major household purchase together. Imagine my surprise when I unpacked the loveseat and saw not cream, but GREEN! I would call it “lettuce green”, a soft green, kind of like key lime pie, maybe. It’s not bad, it’s just very much not what I expected. And somehow Igor was equally surprised. My first thought was that the shop pulled a fast one on him, delivering green furniture instead of cream, but Igor was standing there, helping actually, when they packed it up and loaded it all on the truck. How he could have ever thought this furniture was cream is beyond me. They must have had some funky lights in that shop. So we’re trying to get used to our lettuce green furniture, which doesn’t in the least bit go with the rug that came with the apartment. Looks like our next household purchase will be a new rug.

By the way, the rug that Dad brought us from Armenia goes absolutely perfectly in “my room” - yeah!

We’re going to stay one more week in the old place, and officially start living in the new place next weekend. I can’t wait! I’m glad we got so much done this weekend. I have business trips each of the next three weeks, so won’t actually have much time in our new place for nearly a month - just in time for Christmas!

Speaking of Christmas, Eilene and I went on a tour Saturday of a small factory outside of Kyiv that does hand-made glass Christmas-tree decorations. It was really cool to see the whole process - blowing the glass, applying the real silver plating and glazes, and the hand-painted details. The highlight, of course, was the opportunity purchase ornaments for absurd prices - none of them cost more than $4. I’ll write more and post photos as soon as I find the camera cable in a box somewhere.

We had our first real snow yesterday, and quite a bit overnight. The car was actually frozen shut! Igor finally brought out a kettle full of boiling water, which we poured over all the door locks. What a sight we were this morning, with stacks of suitcases on the sidewalk, trying to get into our car. The city was quite pretty today, all covered in white.

Time for bed. A busy week ahead.

This is International Education Week, with lots of exciting things happening all over the world. Open Doors, a report on international educational exchange, was released today. Most of the detailed statistics are available to members only, but there is still a lot of fascinating information available.

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!

I’ve been back to the Middle Eastern restaurant 2 more times (and also have realized that they call it an Arab restaurant). On Sunday I got lunch to go, and while I waited I chatted with the young man working the cash register, Mohammed. Really nice young man, married to a Ukrainian woman. He introduced me to the new manager, Abrahim, who doesn’t speak English or Russian but who has a lovely smile and gives a good sales pitch in Arabic (at least he delivered it well, even if I didn’t understand the content). I was there again Tuesday night with Igor and some friends, and both Mohammed and Abrahim remembered me, greeting me with big smiles and a wave from across the restaurant. We had the same waitress as the first time we were there a couple weeks ago, and she also remembered us. I love this place!

We have just over a week until we can move to our new apartment - yeah! The coming weekend will be consumed with packing - yuck! I am so excited that we can finally consider ourselves “settled”. Granted, we’ll still be renting, but mentally I am finally ready to make some purchases that up until now seemed like splurging, not mention a pain the butt to haul around if we had to move to another country - my own set of stainless steel cookware, a food processor, a toaster (actually, Dad promised the toaster as a house-warming gift when we move), and a few other things that will just make life easier. Yeah!

I got a massage last weekend from a masseuse recommended by a colleague. He’s a medical student, and is putting his way through university working as a massage therapist. He comes to your place and does massages on the floor. It was a good massage, and much needed, but what I found most interesting was that he is from Turkmenistan. He’s been living and studying in Kyiv for about 5 years. I was a little embarrassed to admit to him that I know very very little about Turkmenistan, but he took advantage of my undivided attention to tell me a long and detailed history of the country. I didn’t catch all of it (it’s hard to concentrate on a history lesson in Russian when you are trying to relax and enjoy your massage!), but I enjoyed listening to him. Even though he dislikes the current regime, he clearly has a lot of pride in his people and heritage.

The sad news of the week is that I accidentally killed my ipod. It fell in a pot of water, and my attempts to dry it out with a hairdryer turned out to be not such a good idea - I think I fried it, literally. I am really missing my daily news dose on my commute to and from work. Electronics are so freaking expensive here, I hate to think of buying a new ipod here. But I don’t know if I can wait until my next trip to the States….

Here’s a really great article on the impact of the US elections on us Americans living abroad. I am happy to say that I have not experienced such serious anti-American sentiment myself, but I have certainly been called out on what my country has been doing the last 8 years. I’ve lost count of how many people have congratulated me in the last week on our new president, with such big beautiful smiles. One of Igor’s friends remembered that I once said I would not live in the US as long as there was a Bush in the White House - and asked if we are going to move back now!

When I saw the headline “Obama Sails To A Sweeping Victory”, my eyes filled with tears and I felt relieved. I am so proud of my country right now. I am so proud.

I’m listening to President-Elect Obama making his victory speech. Never been happier that I couldn’t sleep!

I started chatting with the guy in front of me, and another lady joined in. I made a comment about it being a bit ridiculous that they didn’t start selling the new tokens a few days ago, and the lady chuckled and said (ironically) “But then people wouldn’t have to wait in line!”

You can see the Soviet legacy so clearly in certain aspects of Ukrainian society, and the ability and tolerance to stay in endless lines is certainly one of those legacies.

Frankly, I think Americans would be pitching fits in the streets, if an American public transit system would even dare such a move. In Ukraine, they deflect hysteria by not making available the new passes and tokens - a completely different kind of infuriation (is that even a word?).

Prices of public transportation change tomorrow, 4 November. I tried to buy a new monthly pass last Friday and today - nichevo - they don’t have any. So instead I tried to buy the new 2 hrivna tokens today - nichevo - nada - dream on.

Four million people will need to buy new tokens tomorrow - is this good planning? I am sure I was not alone in wanting to buy a new pass and/or tokens in advance so as to avoid the lines on 4 November. Hah!

The bagel I had for lunch today will NOT make up for the frustration I will face tomorrow morning, standing in line with 4 million commuters to buy the new tokens. I think I’ll work from home, just to avoid the chaos. It’s the whimp’s way out, but wow am I ever grateful that I have the flexibility to do it!