Gigi is coming to town! (Grandma Pat's arrival in Kyiv)

December 17th, Rawly's four week birthday! What a great present to see his Gigi.

As much as we love how efficient public transportation is here—it's by no means quick. We have been very fortunate to use the Skousens' car during our time here in Kyiv. Wednesday night Ken went to put gas in the “Lada” so that we could leave quickly after Ken got out of school to go pick up my mom from the airport the next day. It wouldn't turn over. The battery was dead. Luckily we have a great maintenance staff who took care of the whole car issue so that as soon as Ken's last class was over, I met him down in the parking lot and we were off. Mom's flight arrived at 4:08pm, we made it to the airport around 4:30 searching for any sign of her. It was quite possible that she had missed her connecting flight in Munich. But we had no way to tell. Just when we were considering leaving, Ken got a call from mom—her luggage is what hadn't made the flight, so she had been filling out paper work and the likes to get it delivered the next day.

With bundled baby and grandma in tow, we trucked across the snowy parking lot and were at last on our way home. Or so we thought. Apparently men waving glow sticks at night means that you should pull over. Exiting the airport we were waved down by two guys, the final one standing in front of our car. He started yelling at us and eventually went to get someone who spoke more English than he. We considered just driving off, but they had blocked us in—the police force is often corrupt and just want to be bribed. The second guy also yelled at us also in Russian because we hadn't stopped the first time for him. Then he asked for our paperwork and made Ken get out to look at it. We think that he stopped us because our tags weren't up to date (which they were.) Realizing his error, we were freed! Or so we thought...as it turns out, snow mellows out the Kyivian drivers. Drivers who are usually aggressive and erratic became meek and hesitant; except for a few rouge vehicles, who actually cut across the median and drove down the opposite side against traffic—only to get to the bottleneck bridge and be denied access by most drivers. It took us almost three hours to get home (without traffic it takes ½ hour.) Our friend and apartment neighbor, Elysa, was wonderful and had made us spaghetti to take home so that we didn't have to bother with anything. After we were fed and Mom had settled in a bit, we headed back over to the Skousens' to celebrate Diego's birthday.