Hedgehogs

Hedgehogs often appear in Slavic folktales - but I was surprised to actually see a live one wandering about near our building. Alister and I were walking back from the metro - and it was dark and my peripheral vision caught a large moving mound - too steady to be a rabbit - to big to be a cat and thank goodness not fast enough to be a rat - my LED key chain revealed a hedgehog happily rambling about and doing whatever it is hedgehogs do after dark.
Am still amazed to have seen one in an urban setting.
(actual hedgehog not pictured)

Balcony Garden Woes

So here is an update about my Balcony Garden.

Plant tally:

8 Tomatoes planted - 1 sprouted, two replants and a second sprout was added to the mix - total 2 tomatoes.
8 Peppers planted - Null. Zip, zero, not a single pepper made an appearance - even after3 replantings. :-(

Spinach - I had some very happy, small but flamboyant spinach plants - and last night something ATE all of them. I thought balconies were supposed to be safe from pests. To make matters worse - I also saw a little furry bottom and tail scuttle behind the cupboard on the balcony - how does a mouse get up to the 14th story - and why suddenly now in the spring? Do they just sprout out of the woodwork? Was it eating my spinach??

Rhubarb - also not recommended for growing from seed but yet all of my 6 seeds sprouted and prospered - UNTIL the mysterious something ate them. Now I have 2 very sad and be-nibbled rhubarbs trying to grow under a big plastic water bottle I placed over them for their protection.

Half a package of Celery which wasn't supposed to grow . . . . Everything grew. have transplanted 19 little shoots into plastic cups and sawed off soda bottles - but don't know what to do with them. Gave a whole egg crate littered with dense sprouts away and hope they will thrive and live to celery adulthood. Also have 3 store bought celery plants that are in water and are sprouting roots. Celery is not so hard to grow as it seems. The mysterious something obviously doesn't like celery because all 19 seedlings are intact and thriving.

Lettuce - last week I added lettuce to the mix and was thrilled to see some delicate greens poking through the surface - alas - the mysterious something got to them too last night.

Cilantro - so far nothing has sprouted - but until the mysterious something is caught that may be a good thing.

Driving in Europe

Well, its almost summer and some of you may be set to travel in Europe.

For European driving tips by me and others you may want to look at this article I wrote.

Another great sites for European travel help is http://europeforvisitors.com/ It has a little something for everyone.

Odessa Opera - Il trovatore

The Odessa Opera House is reported to be the second most lovely in Europe - after Vienna, and in the top 5 of beautiful opera houses in the world.

With this record - we couldn't pass it up and went to see an Opera - Il trovatore or The Trubador. Unfortunately, there were no projections and the program was only in Ukrainian. Still, the music and surroundings were lovely and we had a nice time. Three days and a Wikipedia search later - we learned the actual plot of what we watched.

It is amazing though how your brain tries to understand - even when it doesn't know the words - at some points in the opera - I swear the words were Russian - Mudri, Horosho, Litco, I even got Alister to second guess himself and wonder if it was in Ukrainian. Of course it was all in Italian and it was just my mind playing tricks on me :-)

The best part about musicals, operas, ballets, and other musical art forms is that in watching them you discover where the bits and snippets of sound bytes originate from - in this case the Anvil Song - though I knew nothing of the opera itself - I recognised this song.

Odessa / Kiev train

We took the Chernomerec (the black sea train) Down to Odessa and wonder of wonders it had a brand new car! The new car smell still permeated the wagon and everything was new and bright (and clean!!) A bit of sleuthing and we discovered that on the chernomerec, cars number 11 and 6 are always new - and include such perks as better regulated temperature, a burglar alarm on on the door, and a plug in for your laptop or cell phone!
Tickets can be booked 45 days in advance, and probably the new cars go first - so plan ahead!

Goings on

Lots of busyness this last week- but nothing terribly exciting - Alister has been working on his course and I've been doing Pysanky like mad to make gifts for the the "coming of age" ceremony for the denomination of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ukraine. The particularization will happen tomorrow in Odessa - we head down tonight on an overnight train - always an experience.

In all I made 5 goose eggs (that was an adventure to find - but really, I think I had a better chance finding goose eggs here than I would have in the states - even if it did take asking multiple Babushkas - eventually i found a pair of Vegetable sellers, sisters, who said that a goose egg lady came every once and a while and they would buy me the eggs and I could stop buy and pick them up from them. Good to their word - they told the Goose lady about me, told her how many eggs i wanted, and even called me up to let me know she was there and I could buy the eggs. Not only did I get goose eggs out of the deal, but now I have a place i trust to fill all my fruit and vegetable needs.)

All in all, I also dyed 12 chicken eggs - of which only about 7 are worth giving out. Alister gets a bit frustrated i think because I make us keep all the ugly ones with mistakes. So much work went into them - I don't want to throw them away - I even tried to salvage a totally smashed one - but finally gave up and sent it to the big waste bin in the sky.

In other news, Alister and I have taken to making up proverbs - Or rather I make them up and Alister either says it can't be a proverb or it can. So far the only one that he likes (though he still can't remember it ) is "Like a lion on the hunt, do not tease a tired wife". Alister is an evening person and I go steadily downhill from 10pm on - just as he is reaching his comic peak. This combination proves highly frustrating for me, and highly entertaining for Alister - Though if he does succeed on getting me to see the ridiculousness of the incident at the time - I end up enjoying it too.

Here come the clowns

This weekend Alister and I went to the Ukrainian National Circus in Kiev.

This was not a big tent affair - but rather a permanent building with two "features" per year. We went to the winter show - Polar Bears on Skates. The advertisement was in Ukrainian rather than Russian, and for the longest time I thought it was a Polar Bear Playing a Harp (which it also did) but in reality the main feature was Polar Fears on Skates.

Everything about the show was spectacular - it was like - circus meets ice-capades - everything was done on an ice rink - their were "stilts", disappearing acts, performing cats, birds, and of course the polar bears. Each act was put to music and accented with fabulous costumes in winter motif - one of them were glow in the dark snow flakes - another was a battle between fire and ice. Our favorite was the Amazing Icicle Boy who skated on his hands!!

Other than the sheer ability of the performers, I was also struck by the amount of training that when into the animal bits - For example, the cats knew that when they got let out of their cages, they were to trot over to the rope course and run through the obstacles. Another cat knew that when it came out - it was to run to the top of a high pole and then jump onto a scarlet cushion being held by a clown assistant. My cat was pretty smart, but i could never get it to do a trick when he didn't want to entertain.

Still in another act, they actually trained pigeons where to fly and what to do - seriously, pigeons have super tiny brains - how can they be trained to fly and land on first a shoulder and then a bush?

All this without even mentioning the polar bears, who really did run about on skates AND play a harp (so it just looked like a harp - but there was a LIVE orchestra that filled in) (We'd show videos- but we don't want to give away the fun or cheat the Ukrainian National circus out of admission)

Everything was fantastic. So fantastic that Alister actually wants to go again - before the winter season ends on the 30th. He says "Whoever dreamt up the program definitely had a sense of humour, a polar bear ice skating, brilliant!"

The summer show promises to feature a crocodile and a Brown bear - care to join us?

Dippy Dippy Dip or Where's Matthew K when you need him?

A few weeks ago, Alister filled in for the Teen Youth group and put me in charge of games. Growing up - I never actually got to go to Youth group much (we lived too far away) - but fortunately I do love games and paired with that and the amazing capabilities of google - I compiled a list of options. However there was one game that I loved that I wanted to revive - Dippy Dippy Dip. Unfortunately,I had missed the CC road road trip where this game, and another mysterious "Do you want to buy a duck?" game were played non stop and so I wasn't really fully inducted to the rules and not really qualified to teach it to others.

And so in my moment of need - Google failed me - There were no directions for "Dippy Dippy Dip" anywhere on the internet. Finally after hours of searching - I found "2" relevant links - but even they weren't directions, but rather videos . After some other long minutes of watching and rewatching the videos I decided to just go with what I remembered the game to be and add a few things that they seemed to be doing in the video - thats how games evolve and change anyway right?

Alister wasn't convinced the kids would like the game - "it's too Juvenile" I replied that I was playing it in college and thought it was the best game ever - maybe even better than King Elephant.

"King Elephant?"

Anyway, he left the games up to me - and the kids loved in in church the next day a few of the kids started dippy dippy dipping at me when they saw me - So I think they'll even continue the dippy dippy dip tradition

Sarah's Made up Direction for Dippy Dippy Dip, and why video was probably the better option

Everyone stands in a Circle.

One person starts with the "Dippy dippy Dip" If you have the Dip, You hold your hands together, your index fingers extended like a "gun"

The two people on Either side of the "Dippy Dippy" Have the "Dip". They hold their hands up and make them open an close like little puppets.

The "Dippy Dippy DiP" person, says dippy dippy dip and shakes his "gun hands" up and down with each word - at the word Dip he "throws" the dippity to someone else in the circle who immediately starts to say dippy dippy dip and does the same things.

Meanwhile, the people on either side of "Dippy" open and close their "puppet" hands and Say "Dip Dip Dip"

The dip dip dip people are always on either side.

The game will go pretty fast, as fast as the dippy dippy dip person talks - and so it gets fun and frantic as people catch the "Dippy" and have to switch between being "dippy"and being Dip, or not being anything at all.

To make the game more interesting, you can also throw the Dippy Dippy Dip into the air - at which point EVERYONE in the circle throws up their hands and says "YeeHaw!" Or you can throw the dip to the ground, at which point every one does a deep and gust football player spike "HO HO HO"

People are out when they miss their turn to be the "dip" or the "dippy" - the circle gradually shrinks and the last three left "standing" are the winners.

Hmm. Maybe there is a reason why people never attempted to explain the game before . . . Maybe we should stick to the experts.