Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Tom and Cindy started the day at a Notary. We needed to add a document to our paperwork and Jenia and her mother had arranged the notary and an official translator. This process took only a fraction of the time that Cindy spent with her last experience with a notary. They create very beautiful documents with many stamps. It takes a minimum of two people to create these and the notary office felt like a trip to the BMV. We met the rest of the Zap group at a Pizza place and had great pancakes and omelets. We went back to the Apt to get ready for a day of sight seeing.

Two of the major sights were a subway ride away. As we entered the station, Jenia warned us to be aware of our belongings. When Tom got on the train, one man tried to block his way and he had to push his way around him. Then Jim and Mark got on and Tom noticed three people around both of them. Tom also noticed the person behind Jim had a bag that he was opening and closing as if he were preparing to stash stolen property. Tom kept motioning to Jim to watch them and at one point Jim yelled at one to keep his hands off him. This caused quite a seen on a very crowded subway. Jenia made her way over to ask what the problem was and the third guy denied anything. Thankfully, we came to the next stop and everyone got off. The three quickly vanished. We were trying to make sure everyone was OK while we were riding the escalator to the exit. Kyiv is built on hills much like SF and the escalators move very quickly because the subway is so far underground. When we got to the top, we found that Caroline was near one of the men on the way up and was terrified. She clung to Tom's arm and he settled her down. Welcome to the big city. Tom told her that these things can happen anywhere and we should be thankful. We were fine and the person that the theives chose to go after is an IMPD officer.

We walked through the Caves Monastery to go to a WWII museum. They call it the Great Patriotic War and the museum had old Russian planes and militiary equipment on display on the outside and an indoor museum beheath the "Motherland Statue". The indoor Museum had displays on the war from the Russian point of view, with no mention of the allied sacrifice. Caroline and Shelby wanted their picture taken in one of the planes on display. We tried to go in the plane and found that we needed a separeate ticket. After going back for the ticket, Tom took the girls up to the cockpit so they could be seen from the outside. As the girls got their picture taken, Tom noticed that the controls on the plane were in English. The woman collecting the tickets came up and said "McDonald Douglas DC3" .

We found out later that day, the children are taught that Russia won the war, Not the Allies. The exhibits in the museum were interesting because they used many 3D exhibits with artifacts from the war. Germany occupied many cities in Ukraine. In fact, they recognized many cities that kept the Germans out as "Hero Cities."

We stopped for a quick snack and rest break and Tom found what he had been looking for at a shop near the subway, a map and Kyiv and Zaporozhye! Kyiv was in English, but Zaporozhye was only in Russian. The Zap map had enogh detail to map the whole route from Zap to the Matveevka orphanage.

Our church has been active in Ukraine for many years and we wanted to pray with a new Ukrainian friend. Chris Alexander made the introduction to Olga. We initially planned to meet in a park, but we were delayed in meeting the rest of the group because of all the political demonstartions. We were going through an underground tunnel to meet them when we saw them passing the other way. There were 17 Americans greeting and hugging each other in a realtively dark pedestrian tunnel. I am sure that we made quite a sight. Olga was taking them to a coffee shop because it was cold.

We found room for all at the coffe shop. Olga stated that it was a God thing since the shop was almost always crowded. In this case, there was room at the inn! Olga led us in a wonderful prayer session and fellowship. She could not join us for dinner, but was kind enough to share a good story about her time with Chris and Gary. Evidently they are good at cooking Ukrainian food.

We are trying to stay away from fish while in Ukraine since Tom had an unpleasant experience of the last trip and the CDC recommended this on their website. Jenia was busy helping others get through the cafeteria line. I needed to help Caroline with her food selections. The lady did not understand English. I need to find out if fish was in the piece of food that Caroline wanted. So, I waved my hand like a fish tail and made my mouth look like a fish mouth. My body language worked! The lady was laughing so hard that she had stomach pains but did tell us that no fish was in Caroline's first choice of meat. I am getting very good at getting my point across.

After dinner, we went back to the Apt.