Vorzel- and our new apartment, uhm, dorm room--2007

Meghan all dressed to leave Kyiv and move to our new temporary home in Vorzel. Yes, she was way under dressed, it was so much warmed in Kyiv than Vorzel. We did not make that mistake again. She wore her parka from that point forward.

The busy streets of Kyiv, honestly it seemed like any other large city, except for the signs on the buildings, and some smaller cars. We had fun looking for American cars there, saw a few, even Fords, which we were both surprised to see. We saw girls walking fast on uneven sidewalks in stilettos, I figured out that they actually were an advantage in snow and ice, I slipped in my flat boots all the time.

Remnants of the snow that covered everything that weekend in Kyiv. Cars

routinely parked on sidewalks, but what choice did folks have, millions of people and no parking garages=parking on sidewalks (and driving on them too)

Leaving Kyiv, we thought the snow would be gone, but 20 miles away and in the middle of a forest, the snow was deep and it was much colder, and it continued to come down day after day.
So we entered the Irpen province and more snow, I loved the stop signs, they did have some in English, traditional western octagonal stop signs, but I liked to see these better. Tom always called them C-T-O-staples signs. Russian or English, it says STOP. You can click on the picture to enlarge the image.

The road towards the "resort" We called it the monastery those first couple of weeks, so isolated, no one but our Yelena to talk to, but after 6 weeks it became home to me, and I was happy to return to it after a long day in Kiev paper chasing.

Hmmmm, something left over from the USSR?

Peremoga, from my bad Russian I read that this is the Vorzel Sanatorium Anyone know what Peremoga means?

The map, we were in the first building after the entrance, Corpuce (my translation)#3, diagonal walkway to the right.

The entryway, a nice slippery walk to our Corpuce, they did put sand and salt down to help with slipping, but it became a thick ice path each night as we slept.

The playground at the Peremoga, no one let their kids play there the first two weeks.

Our building, this was the tallest one on the complex, mostly families and older folks stayed there. You could hear children running overhead at all hours. We chose the first floor because the steps were steep and Meghan kept tripping on them, we did not want her or us for that matter, to have a terrible accident. The 4Th floor room had a TV, but it was all in Ukrainian and Russian, so what was the need for one?

The hallway to our room, the first week we were there some unruly kids pulled off one of those handrails, it sat on the floor for a week.

Yes, I took a picture of our room number, I can still hear Tom saying the number in Russian to the staff when her paid for another week. Adin adin pyat'

Our room, Meghan will give you a tour, ignore the fluffy woman in the background...

This was our room, we also had a non-working refrigerator, a small desk, and a bathroom and small closet. It was frustrating that we had a computer with us, but no way to connect to the Internet. I did find out that for $200 I could have had a satellite connection for the entire time I was there, frankly by the end of 6 weeks, $200 sounded more than worth the money.

The path on the way to the dining hall, we had to get all of our clothes back on, hats, gloves, parka's and trudge through snow and slush to the dining hall, some days it was just too hard to go to lunch, we were all tired, and they fed us an awful lot of food, we were usually stuffed for lunch.

We ate breakfast at 9:00, Lunch at 1:30 and dinner at 6:00. It was already getting dark at 4;00, so the walk to dinner was always pretty dark, for some reason they forgot to turn on the lights along the way, but we noticed the Ukrainian folks had pretty good night vision, we used a flashlight sometimes, it screamed AMERICAN. LOL

The dining hall, they did a good job making it look pretty. It was so embarrassing to have Meghan spill food on the pretty tablecloths, but Kara was much worse! For most of the 6 weeks, we ate here alone, we sat at a table in the corner, while the rest of the kids ate opposite us, and across the middle dining hall. Our section was the prettiest, and we always had a flower on our table, it was their way of telling us where to sit. Some days it was in the main dining hall with all the old folks, I loved seeing and hearing them, and so wished I could talk to them.

Meghan eating her first meal, noodles that she would not eat, but a huge hot dog that she downed in no time.

A painting in our portion of the dining hall, I am sure it is of the forest surrounding Vorzel.