Rixos Prikarpatye Truskavets

... mental, physical, and emotional well being hangs in the balance. Zhenia has told us that the director will let us know at 4pm if we have Talia's passport and can get the 6:30pm train to Kiev, essentially beginning our exodus with an estimated departure day of Friday, OR, we wait anywhere from 7-10 more days while this processes and in the meantime, Lauren begins hitchhiking through Eastern Europe with a 4-year old ...

... That took about 30 minutes. Then we went to drop off all the papers to the passport department in Svalyava. I guess the department prepares all the documents for us to take back on Monday when we actually apply for the passport.

Finally at 5:30 we went back to Pasha's house, grabbed the snacks and toys for the orphanage along with Talia's outfit and headed to the orphanage. We met with the director and the orphanage lawyer ...

... 81 people have died so far, and none of them from the actual swine flu! They died of the regular flu and/or complications with that. Zhenia and many people in Kiev believe that their government is using this opportunity to point fingers at each other and show who is doing the most for the country since it is nearing election time. Either way, it still isn't directly affecting us or Talia so we are happy! From what we hear some ...

... restaurant we like, "Monte Cristo". We also are going to try and pick up another drink box for Talia since she liked the other one so much once she got the hang of the straw.

We haven't heard from Zhenia yet today but he might be here tomorrow. We hope that he will be because we want to go shopping for a few things with his help, and we also need to go to the bank. He will be here by Friday morning at the latest. Friday during the day we ...

Back at the "Post Office" today...the internet connection at our cafe we were going to with the wifi was screwy the last two days, so we bailed for now. I miss my daily coffee over there already!

Last night, we headed back to the orphanage for our evening visit and what a relief! Talia was back to her old playful self, running the halls with us. This time we tried something different along with our daily apple for our snack...an apple juice box we ...

Hello again! We are in the internet cafe and the internet isn't working as well as before. Hopefully we can get our blog finished before it kicks us off! We also had a guy quickly run to the back today before two men walked into the restaurant. One man has a crazy huge black mustache. Scott thinks they might be part of the Ukrainian mafia and we're about to see something go down. Stay tuned!

So yesterday afternoon Talia was better ...

... The president announced yesterday that for the next three weeks schools and cinemas will be closed and all public gatherings will be banned! There also have been quarantines issued in 7 of the western regions, limiting all "non-essential travel" (information has been tough to get and spotty at best!) Zhenia has assured us that, as of now, our region is businss as usual and our plans have not changed...Friday cannot come ...

I believe this will be one of the most memorable days of my entire
trip. Ross and I had cooked up the amazing idea to attempt to find the
small town my great grandfather and great great grandfather immigrated
to Canada from. At the beginning of our research we knew the English
name Woola Dolhucka and that was about it. I gathered research from relatives in Canada and learned it was near a larger town named Stryj south of Lviv.
Stryy, L'vivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine swints

Today is "International Women's Day," one of the few soviet holidays still celebrated in Ukraine. I have the day off, and I received a beautiful gift this morning- birds singing outside my window. I don't ever remember feeling so strongly connected to the changing seasons and weather as I do here. When I heard the birds, I felt a strong sensation, and realized it was the first time I had heard birds in 6 months. They are singing because somehow ...

Ah, the glories of camp. At some point during service, practically every Peace Corps Volunteer takes part in a summer camp. We have lists of these events hanging up in the computer room at the PC office, as well as clogging our email boxes throughout the end of the spring and beginning of summer. Since I changed sites in April, and my new UNDP site is what I would consider a “serious” job, I figured that I wasn’t really going to have any vacation time this ...