Day 2

I made it thru all of "A Few Good Men", Aimee did not. This was after watching "300", "RobRoy" and "Somethings Gotta Give". I have no answer why we were both wide awake most of the night, especially me. I now know that you can toggle back and forth between a bag of "Munchies" and Skittles for a complete two-course meal! After "300"and "Rob Roy", I was ready to go out and save the world-however, when you can't even work the door code to the building you're staying at, it's best not to leave the apartment. You don't want to risk being an international moron by being locked out of your building in the driving rain-oh, that's right, that was us!! We met Valentin this morning. He was an hour early, so I shook his hand in a bath towel. Great 1st impression. Perfect English, very nice and personable, answered all our questions and used our map to point out where things were. SDA tomorrow at 2PM. He said we could walk there in about 15 minutes or drive there in an hour, so, of course, he's picking us up at 1PM to drive us!?! We leave Thursday evening at 715PM for Donetsk, then to Mariupol by 11AM Friday. Had him upgrade to 1st class on the train-too many horror stories about the alternative, not too much money, either. Our translator is Nadiya. Valentin is very positive about her and we know the Renfro's had her when they were here and had nothing but positives about her, also. McDonald's, on the main street has Wi-Fi. Because I know just enough Russian/Ukrainian to start WWIII, I was able to read the letters and sound out the menu enough to not irritate the a large portion of the Kiev population. It REALLY helps to at least be able to know the letters and the sounds-a lot of words are the same, if you can stumble through the letters. Walking on the sidewalk is tantamount to walking in the middle of the street, but no one seems to mind! My personal take on Ukrainian fashion: tight jeans, Stiletto's and lots of black-for what that's worth from a guy who wears brown most of the time. For those wondering: Barrett's are fine, though they have NOTHING to do in the place they are-to use Johnny's words, "...outer gates of hell..." They apparently have limited to no access to Internet, however, Johnny still has E-mail on his Blackberry. They have "preliminary court" on Wednesday-whatever that is. Johnny's take is that it is a hearing where the court gets to "request" more money in order to get a real court date. Pure speculation, we'll see. The underground malls apparently have a, "..never-ending-descent" process-lots of descending levels. Very cool, though! Added a few more pictures. More later.