Our Travels

April 4, 2008

Traveling to Kyiv


March 28th

So there we were trying to get situated in the plane from DC to Frankfurt Eric was loaded with his laptop, a backpack full of toys and a garment bag. I had a stroller, the diaper bag, car seat on wheels plus Keenan. Yup, do you think we brought to much carry on? We finally get the car seat all buckled in when the flight attendant looks at us and says “oh, I don’t think that car seat is airline approved. You’re probably going to have to check that at the gate and just hold your son.” WHAT? Are you freakin’ kidding me? You’re telling me on an overseas night flight I have to hold my son?! So we had to take the car seat out and let the flight attendant “inspect” it. In little tiny red letters on the side of the car seat, barely visible to the naked eye were the magic words “aircraft approved”. Yeah! First hurdle tackled! So we got to install the seat yet again. Second hurdle was to get who ever was going to sit next to me to switch seats with Eric. For some reason our seats were separated. With a bit of grumbling on both my part and the guy seating next to me this task was also completed. Here’s a picture of Keenan on his first overseas flight and one of him in an airport trying to eat Eric’s sandwich.




Keenan fell asleep almost immediately but woke up as soon as the food was being served. (Shocking I know, he always thinks he’s hungry!) After that Keenan slept a on and off, the lights were on in the cabin almost the entire flight shining right on his face. The rest of the flight was fairly uneventful. Some baby a few rows behind us sounded like he (or she) was hating life. That baby screamed for about the last hour of the flight. I even offered up one of Keenan’s binkies to help the poor mother out which shut him up! Behold the power of the binky! We also a had a smaller baby a few rows in front of us on the short flight from Frankfurt to Kyiv that cried almost the whole way. Oh well, at least she was little and it wasn’t too bad.

We finally arrived in Kyiv Friday afternoon their time, about 6 am Mountain Time. We could hear our dog Sierra crying from across the airport. She was pretty freaked out about the whole traveling experience. We were whisked right through entry and customs and found the person who was taking us to our apartment. Wow, everything looks so foreign! Gee…and I can’t read much of anything. I guess I should have studied the local lingo just a little bit more!

We were happy to finally get settled in our apartment. Our stuff won’t arrive for quite a while but thankfully it is already furnished and has some food already stocked. Yeah! After living in a cramped hotel for 6 months it’s nice to finally have a big place to stay, at least for the next 2 years. Our apartment is very pretty; it is on the 7th floor of an 8 floor building which is a pretty tall building in our part Kyiv. Here’s a picture of the stained glass going into our living room. Since there aren’t very many tall buildings around us we have some pretty good views of the city. Here are a few pictures of what we can see from our windows and one of Keenan playing with the bedae (sp?)

4 comments:

Lindsey Sears said...

Wow! Your life seems so surreal! The views from your apartment are incredible and I cannot believe all that you have experienced so far and its only been a week! I can't wait until we can Skype! Missing you tons! Keep up the blogs, it is so much fun to read and see what you are up to in that foreign world you now call home! Love, Linds

Jami said...

That goes double for me...how surreal! So how does a beddea work?

Laura Olson said...

Wow - what an amazing view! And what a beautiful apartment. I second Lindsey's comment - definitely keep blogging. :)

jsully21 said...

What a great veiw from your apartment and your stained glass is beautiful!