Today was good day. We had a great visit with Lizzt this morning.She was very attentive and was excited to see us. This evening she was again infatuated with the Ukraine woman. However, that is OK with us and the woman really likes her so all is well. We are doing OK without our facilitator and have made two trips to the market by ourselves. Paul was just talking about how a few weeks ago he was miffed that his Starbucks was too watery. Now we have to make a daily trip to the market on muddy paths/alleys to get to the market to buy drinkable water and haul it back to our apartment. We live a life of luxury in Atlanta :) We are having lunch tomorrow with our new friends from Israel. They had a bad experience here yesterday. They went into a restaurant and a guy stood up and called "Jew, Jew". They left the restaurant because they didn't want any trouble. We couldn't believe it. They said they were warned about Ukraine, but they didn't expect to experience that first hand. On a lighter note, I am definitely the only handicapped person around. When we were walking through a path to see the forts, I was holding Paul's coffee cup while he pushed the wheelchair. Some guy walking by slipped a Ukrainian 5 dollar bill in my hand. He thought I was begging for money with my coffee cup in hand and being in a wheelchair. Paul, our facilitator, and I laughed so hard we cried. It was so funny. (and sweet) There is zero accessibility here. Paul has to push me everywhere so as not to get mud all over me and to help me up and down curbs and huge potholes. Also, they make fun of American coffee. The coffee here is like black tar. There is a coffee here that you can get that is named something Americana and it is watery coffee. Haha. Our internet connection is off and on here so we don't always get to get on as much as we'd like. It has almost been two weeks and we are getting a tiny bit homesick. We miss everyone and the little creature comforts we are used to and familiar with. Hopefully court will be next week and we will see what happens from there.
Love,Candace and Paul
It's crazy how different it is over there! No handicap accessibility--it's almost impossible to imagine anymore after the 1990 Act--some buildings are still hard to navigate (no wheelchair here, but it's very evident once you start pushing strollers)--our campus is like that. Partially new and partially post-1990. Things are accessible, but not necessarily easy to navigate. But I suppose that it could be worse as you illustrated.
ReplyDeleteI'm so excited about Lizzy... what a surprise! Like a mother who's told at her ultrasound that it's a boy, but "he" is actually a "she" when she arrives! I wonder how she'll take the temperature change? I imagine it's really cool over there. My brother died in Georgia in December and we went there for his funeral (first time I'd ever been there) and I was blown away by how WARM and MUGGY it was in DECEMBER! Insane!!!
Anyway, I think adjustment will be a lot easier because she'll have a MOM AND A DAD!!! ♥
I forgot to comment on your friends' experience. How sad! And it's really so different than the USA. Nobody seems to really notice that any more like they once did (Jewishness). I suppose even the cultural fears of Americans would seem backward to a European, though.
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