Day One.

Hello All,

We are here in Kiev, and survived the first night. It is rainy and cold about 45 degrees, has been like this since we arrived. The flights and airports were OK, most trouble was in Chicago.The signs were all misleading, we had a three hour lay over and barely made the plane. Matt took a long time to get through security with his ankle boot, they always had to take him to separate area and do extra searches.

We were given custom forms on the flight into Kiev. We filled them out but not complete, we only did the arrival section not departure, the customs agent at the airport was very irritated with us. We also did not complete the section that asked us who was meeting us because Valentin did not say his name, only that he would meet us with a sign with our name on it. The customs agent was unwilling to help or give us any instructions, just wanted to keep sending us to the back table to redo and go to the back of the line. Thank God for the nice blond lady working with him who finally stepped in and told him just to put Kiev and give us the stamp. The man did and we were free to go, but he was not happy about doing so. Why they have people with that "Gate Keeper" mentality meeting visitors I do not know.

We were met by Sergei our driver, he was very nice. Told us right away that he only spoke a little English, but it was plenty enough for us to understand each other. He drove a very new clean vehicle, had plenty of room for our 4 suitcases. When we arrived to his car, he promptly called Valentin for us to check in. Matt talked to Valentin by phone and said his English was perfect. Arrangements were made for us to meet the nephew of the lady who apartment we were staying at to get keys, door code and instructions. Sergei drove fast, but I felt very safe, he had seat belts and we did use them. And yes people do drive and park on sidewalks we did too. Sergei pointed out some popular sights along the way, and was always very concerned with our comfort. Matt asked if he could stop for us to exchange money, we got the standard answer"No Problem" after that he took us to the apartment. The outside of the building was a bit run down, and the elevator was small and scary. Sergei had to take our luggage up in several trips because we could not all fit in there with it. When we made a comment about size of elevator he blamed it on the French, said was designed and built in France over 25 years ago.

Our apartment is very nice and clean. We have hot water and a washing machine. It is very close to downtown Kiev. We have found a coffee shop that has WI-FI and really good cappuccino.

We plan to walk around more after this and try to find some of the sights and churches to explore.

By the time we got settled in apartment we realized we were starving, and had no idea where to get food. Thank God for Cup 'O Noodles and Munchies that we had packed just in case(thanks Twyla for the advice) there is bottled water and a plug in water boiler in the apartment so dinner was served.