The Chapmans' Ukrainian Adventure: January 2011

Friday, January 7, 2011

The lil' guy

Twenty-ten has come and gone and here's what Rawly is up to:
Mmm! food: bananas, bread, and any paper that he can get to faster than Mom or Dad can
Favorite song: anything Dad sings or he can dance or drum along with
He says: mum, bahl (ball), dahd (dad)
Rawly language includes words for: food, dogs, cats, look
There's always time for this book: Little Quack Counts
He signs: all done, more, please, *perro (Ken thinks he's just slapping his leg by chance), *touch down (Rawly sign, not ASL), *that (the sideways point has given way to a normal pointing motion)
ASL that Rawly understands: Dad, Mom, banana, food, water, cat, apple, change, Nick
Toys we couldn't live without: Chancho (the pig), Perro (the dog), spoons, plastic bottles, drum sticks
Activities that occupy the majority of his time: putting lids on containers, drumming, laughing at himself or others, peek-a-boo (called cuc-coo in Russian)
New sources of joy: finding belly buttons (most recently), walking, kisses, roaring
Touched sand on the following continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, North America
Has a stamp in his passport from: Ukraine, Italy (technically we left three days before 2010-but close enough), Egypt, Poland, USA, Canada (well, no official maple leaf only because we didn't want to wait in line), Greece, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia (also no stamp because we were already in an EU country.)
Game his life wouldn't be the same without: KABOOM!
You can oftentimes find him: helping with laundry--slam dunking clothing into the hamper: clean or dirty and sharing: food or toys

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Riding on trains

The Monday after Christmas we hopped aboard to go visit friend from work who had lived in Bratislava, Slovakia for four years. Bratislava is just an hour's train ride from Vienna. The arctic like temperatures didn't deter us. We took in a view of the city from the Bratislava castle and quickly descended into Old Town for hot chocolate. Hot chocolate there was more like melted chocolate with a flavor of your choice--double yum! Their kids finished off the tour and took us to a local restaurant where we ate Halusky with sheep cheese and drank Kofola (a more natural cola--super smashna!) We wish that our trip had been all together longer so that we could have spent more time there.

All the statues spread out through town demanded that we do cheesy tourist shots!

Rawly even got pulled into the game

What else can I say? It was a great day!

pre-Chistmas update

First things first, we have decided to stay on one more year after this one. I'm sure this has some of you shaking you heads. But several factors have lead to our decision. A huge one is the financial motivation of the third year bonus. We have been able to pay off a huge chunk of our school loans--which was one of the major motivations for making the move in the first place. Anyhow, we're really enjoying the new group of friends that came in this year. Life is a bit easier now, not so much culture shock, no new baby, the language sounds more familiar even though I still don't understand it. And quite honestly we're a little nervous about finding jobs back in the States again. Knowing that we would be here another year and a half, when an updated apartment behind the school became available, we made the decision to move. The complication however was that we would be playing musical apartments. We began moving a few bags at a time into a spare room and eventually borrowed the groundskeepers' cart. It must have been quite the sight: stroller with rickety wheels, bicycle tire cart with missing back end, and us trudging through the sandlike snow. I sure wish we had thought to take a picture! But here are some pictures that we do have...

Our new building is the middle one. We call it the "Green Day" building because you can clearly see it written on the top from the soccer field.

Here's a view from Rawly's room looking down at the snow-covered soccer field. We now get to enjoy great "industrial-enhanced" sunrises and sunsets from our bird's eye view. You can also just barely see Ken's classroom from Rawls' window.

Here's Rawly, with our friend Natasha from work, trying on a typical hat that many Ukrainians wear (though, on adults, it doesn't generally cover their ears--so are they really that warm?)

Sharece, a friend from college, stayed with us for a couple days on either side of her trip back to her PeaceCorps village. It was fun to have another Duck around!

Christmas in Vienna

There's nowhere like home for the holidays--except when you have to deal with a jet-lagged toddler! After we had decided to spend Christmas with the Stocketts in Vienna, we opted for the direct flight option. All systems were a go as we headed out of our new apartment on the 23rd, a few minutes late in typical Chapman form, but nothing to worry about. The elevator opened to four maintenance men water pipes in hand. We loaded ourselves on with Rawly in his stroller and our two bags. The ten flights proved to be the typical awkwardness that generally ensues when you know that you're in close confines with foreigners. Then it happened. The elevator plummeted--so maybe it was only an inch or two--but that difference cost us catching our flight. Luckily a nice lady helped us get on a later flight and we were in Vienna by evening!