Steve's Dad, Kelly and Stepmom, Martha came to visit us from September 8-14th. It was exciting for us to host them and we even had a truly Ukrainian experience with the apartment we rented for them while they were here! The host never showed up to give us keys and stopped answering any of our calls so we booked them into a lovely, inexpensive hotel close to our apartment. A truly Ukrainian welcome - plans change and you need to be ready with a back up plan!
Another fun first - Steve got pulled over at the check stop when we were coming into Zap from picking them up at the airport in Dnipro. That has never happened before and he even had to get out of the car and go into the office with the police officer. The officer kept repeating the same thing over a few times which we've been told is code for "give me *something* and you can go" but instead Steve just told him that he was just going to call a "friend who deals with this all the time" and called Garry. As soon as Steve started speaking English on the phone he was suddenly free to leave. What a fun experience to have with first-timers to Ukraine! Neither Steve or I were worried but we were all praying in the car, because you never know!
We had a busy first full day on Friday. We picked Dezmond up from school and headed to the largest market in the city because it's overwhelming and awesome! From there we headed to Khortitza Island to do shashlik together. In the evening we headed over to the port down the river and took a river cruise. It was the perfect evening - warm and calm.
The boat was just spectacular! It's my favourite activity to do with people.... when they're here during boat season, that is!
On Saturday afternoon we headed out to Nicolaipolia to visit with Garry.
He showed them all around and told them the Mennonite history of the village and we had a great visit with lots of walnuts to go around.
On Sunday after church we went to our friend Ara's home where his dad has a business doing Armenian shashlik. We had been there once before and it was incredible, and this time was no different. The BEST shashlik we've ever had without a doubt and he always makes sooooo much food!
Our friend Ara used to be an officer with the Ukrainian National Police and we had told him long ago that Kelly might be coming to visit and he was so interested in meeting a real Canadian police officer! So he had plenty of questions and was great company during our meal.
We finished Sunday with a trip to the Russian banya. Everyone must know by now that it's my favourite activity, ha ha. A hot sauna and an icy cold pool are only half of what I enjoy - the atmosphere, the visiting and the snacking! I made some rollkuchen and watermelon to bring along with us in between dips in the pool and frying in the sauna.
On Monday we left the boys with our friend Marina and took the overnight train to Kiev with Kelly and Martha. We knew that they NEEDED to experience the train but we were also nice and booked the train that is much newer than the typical old Soviet ones we usually take! In Kiev the next morning we found an apartment-type hotel to stay in on the 29th floor of a building so we had a great view of the city.
Kelly has always been very interested in World War 2 so we took him to the World War 2 museum which is basically tank and artillery heaven.
I was surprised that the museum itself was only in Ukrainian - I was sure that being in the capital with more tourists there would be English. It was still interesting and massive - it would have taken forever to actually read through everything if there had been English. The room that moved me the most was the "hall of memories" which was a massive room filled with personal photographs and things of the soldiers and their families.
This is heading down towards Independence Square, or Maidan as it's more commonly known.
The next day after lunch at Pazatta Hatta (a chain of Ukrainian cafeteria restaurants) we threw Kelly and Martha on a bus to the airport and headed back to Zap on the inter-city train which got us back home by ten in the evening.
It was fantastic to show more family members our city and bits and pieces of our life here. It's always so much fun to see visitors react to things that to us are already normal! I felt like they really enjoyed their time here and hope that we showed them enough nice things that they'll come back for another visit in the future!
