A Visit from Family

On Wednesday evening, April 5, 2012, our son Jeffrey, his wife Stephanie, and children Samuel, Oliver, Eleanor, and Charlotte arrived in Kyiv to visit us.  We were grateful for their willingness to make the long expensive journey and loved having them share some of the sights and experiences of Kyiv we enjoy.  This is where they stayed, just a 5 minute walk through the back gate and alley of the businesses to the temple complex and our apartment next to the temple.  It was an unnamed apartment/motel in progress of being built.  Some of it was unfinished, but their rooms were nice and comfortable.

We worked in the temple on the morning shift.  They were getting adjusted to our time zone (9 hours ahead of Rexburg) and could sleep, get up and ready for the day and come to our apartment for brunch/lunch.  Then we went on outings in the afternoon/evening.  [Most of these places we had visited before and have a previous descriptive Post which will be referenced by date.]

On Thursday we went to see the famous Motherland statue on the hills overlooking the Dneiper river.  We rode a bus and then the Metro subway.  On our way we passed by a war memorial to those who fought and died in WWII.  [May 2011--WWII Victory Day in Kyiv]

We also walked by the memorial for victims of the "Holdomar", the Soviet-imposed famine of the 1930's when millions died from starvation. [Nov 2010--The Ukraine Famine of 1932-33]

We walked a long way to this huge Motherland statue. [Nov 2010--Kyiv's Motherland Statue]   Unfortunately we just missed the time for entering the museum in the base underneath it and so we walked around and took pictures.

We saw some of the war vehicles displayed nearby.

Then we enjoyed dinner at a nearby Ukrainian restaurant.  [Sept 2010--A Visit to a Ukrainian Restaurant]

On Friday we went to the Museum of Folk Architecture at Pyrohovo.  [Sept 2010--Museum of Folk Architecture]  We drove with a guide around various villages representative of the regions in Ukraine and their unique building styles complete with homes and churches, most of which have been dismantled and moved to this location just outside Kyiv (not far from our temple site)

The interior of the church above

A school house

These are various natural beehives!

The interior of the very tall tower of the church above

Various windmills from many parts of Ukraine, used for grinding flour.

On our way home we stopped at the Novus grocery store and selected items from the deli for our dinner; it was sometimes hard to decide so we picked many options!

Saturday we went to the Lavra. [Oct 2010--Kyiv's Monastery of the Caves]  Natural caves in the hills above the Dneiper river began to be used in 1051 by solitary monks who lived and died there.  More joined them and a monastery developed, later with buildings and churches. 

The bell tower has been covered for restoration for a year.  One of it's large bells was being rung and visitors were glad to hear it and also to feel it's vibrations!

We walked down the covered walkway to the lower caves where "relics" of dead monks are venerated.

After walking through the caves, we stopped for a snack.  Charlotte had been given an apple by one of the priests as we exited the caves and she was delighted to eat it.  We had brought some other apples to cut up and eat along with cookies, etc.

These are statues of Cyril and Methodious, brothers and monks from Thessalonika who lived in the mid 800's, traveled from Byzantium to the region around the Black Sea, invented the "Cyrillic" alphabet to express the oral Slavic language and then translated the Bible into "old Slavonic" so it could be read and understood by Slavic people.  The Lavre became a center for copying and preserving the written and printed holy words and has many musuems.  Perhaps an unlikely but fascinating museum is that of miniatures made by one Ukrainian craftsman.  Each round display contains a miniature viewed by a microscope, such as the chess set on the head of a pin and the gold dragonfly with an eye that is a working miniature clock!  Jeff took the pictures with his iPhone!   

We took a bus and the Metro to the other side of downtown past the replica of the "Golden Gate" entrance to the old walled city of Kyiv. [July 2011--The Upper Old City} The gate was never golden; when approaching it visitors could see the golden domes of the of cathedrals like---

the St. Sophia Cathedral with it's imposing bell tower gate.

We walked across the plaza past the statue to Bogdan Khmelnetsky

and statues to Princess Olga, (the first Christian convert among Kievan Rus rulers in about 950 who influenced her grandson Vladimir), Cyril & Methodious, and St Andrew.  We were heading to buy souvenirs.  Nearby is St. Andrew's Cathedral where there had been lots of reconstruction work blocking access to it.  On this pre-Easter holiday weekend, it was open and we were glad to go inside.  It is obviously built in a more ornate Baroque style.  

Then we bought souvenirs.  Here are Sam and Oliver with Kyiv Dynamo soccer shirts, hats and skarf

and Charlotte with her stacking doll painted like a cat in front of the St Michael's bell tower.

Walking back downtown we passed an old man playing a bandura [April 2011--The Bandura]

and also went through the main Independence Square

with it's triumphal arch to St. Michael, patron saint of Kyiv

and the tall Independence column, all above a huge underground multi-level shopping mall which is the reason for all of the glass skylights.

We finally arrived at the location of our dinner stop--Pizata Khata, a Ukrainian buffet chain.

After eating we thought we could roam a little farther up through the alleyway, to a small park where we were surprised that the trees had been decorated by hanging wooden pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs.  [Sept 2011--Pysanky--Ukrainian Eggs]  I found out this was the second Easter that children had been invited to make these eggs as a way to help them learn the old folk art, and then they had been displayed this way.  Through the park is the Ukrainian Drama Theater

and past that to the right, up a hill and across the street is the large white building of the Secretariat of the President of the Ukraine with the back side of the House with Chimeras on this side of the street.  We went to see this unusual building!  [May 2011--National Headquarters in Kyiv]

We were very tired by the time we rode back "home" on the subway!

On Sunday it was our Easter but also the day that the saints in eastern Europe enjoyed general conference that had been recorded the week previous.  So the international branch that meets in the church building next to the temple met at 10a for a brief sacrament service which we attended.  Afterwards they watched general conference and we left since we had watched the sessions the week before.  We had an Easter dinner and then went for a final walk downtown.  We took the Metro to the side of the Dneiper river.  Then we rode this funicular to the top of the hill. [July 2011--The Upper Old City] 

That brought us to the Cathedral of St. Michael.  The Orthodox church was celebrating Palm Sunday. [April 2011--Easter]  Their holy day calendar is different, usually by 2 weeks, but this time by only one. [Dec 2010--Churches, Calendars and Holidays]

These were examples of the kinds of ornaments on the top of the church.

Services were already over in the morning but for the many who were visiting during the day, a choir was singing.  It was lovely to hear inside the domed space.  We weren't the only ones taking pictures inside.  In fact, in a smaller chapel nearby a ceremony was taking place with a baby and being photographed and recorded. (In the foreground is the head of Eleanor covered with the special pink/purple skarf she bought as a souvenir!) 

From there it was a short walk to the statue of Vladimir commemorating his bringing Christianity to Kyiv Rus in 988.  This is also the location where church members came with leaders and Elder B K Packer when Ukraine was dedicated for the preaching of the gospel in 1991.

We continued walking along the hillsides, past the Kyiv State Academic Puppet Theater.  Unfortunately performances this week were only on Sunday so we just took pictures outside the picturesque building which looks like a castle and is surrounded by many bronze statues which are props for great photos--only 2 of many that we took!

 We had to take a picture of the "home" stadium for the Kyiv Dynamo soccer team.

We walked across a footbridge covered with locks and other remembrances of undying love, through the Mariansky park, past more sites, and to the Metro station.

We got off the subway at the main train station and transfered to a trolly car for the final public transportation ride in Kyiv.  We arrived close to the temple complex and walked in the rain that had been threatening and held off until then.  We changed clothes and went to a concert in the chapel cultural hall.  Members of the stake shared their talents for the temple missionaries and any others who wanted to come.  We were very glad for this repeat performance since our children and grandchildren were able to see and hear Ukrainian and classical music well performed, often by young people.

The boy playing a type of trumpet was 7.  This is the small orchestra that played.

We took this picture inside our apartment at the end of the day.  But the final one was taken just after church earlier in the day by a fellow temple missionary when the weather was still good.  The next morning, Monday, April 10, Jeff's family left us to return home via Paris.  We were so grateful for the time we were able to spend together.  We made lots of memories and hope this will reinforce them.

Swan Lake

We enjoyed another ballet at the National Opera of the Ukraine.  Just the Tchaikovsky music was enough to have kept us happy.  This was orchestra pit full of wonderful musicians just before the conductor came out.  I looked at the 4 bass viols and remembered our daughter Nancy's comment that all of the good music for the string bass was by composers whose names ended in -sky or -ov!  Those East European romantic composers liked a full orchestra to create their big luscious sounds!  Our other children and grandchildren who play instruments besides piano will note 2 bassoons, many violins, violas and cellos,  (some hidden), 2 french horns, many drums, clarinets, flutes, oboe and harp.  There were many beautiful solos parts played.

The audience is requested not to take photos, and I didn't, until the last act.  Turning off the flash, and waiting for times when the dancers were almost still, I was able to catch several beautiful poses.  This is during the ball when Prince Siegfried becomes acquainted and enchanted by Odile, who so resembles his swan princess Odette that he believes it is she to whom he has sworn love.  To the right you see his mother, the sovereign princess sitting with courtiers, and the evil sorcerer Rothbard in black.

(The Odette/Odile role is danced by the same person.)

After he realizes the deception and returns to the swan lake, he finds the enchanted swan girls who are heart-broken because now they cannot be released from Rothbard's spell.  

In this version Siegfried fights and eventually defeats Rothbard.  Thus the spell is broken and the swans return as humans again---a happy end!  

Winter Freeze

It began on January 23, 2012, a new moon.  The day before the high was 32.  On a clear night the temperature dropped to 27 and there was some snow and wind.   In the morning the sun came out and as the temperature rose, fog appeared.  Alex, our facility supervisor, was out and about as the grounds crew began clearing snow from walks.  He took a lot of pictures, in the sunshine, and then in the fog.  This one is the best of all, taken from the non-public area on the back side of the temple.  Actually, the photo has been "flipped" so it works better as wallpaper on a computer!  But otherwise, it is untouched.

JD noted the fog and took this beautiful photo a little later through our window.  (It was a Monday plus the temple was closed at this time so we were home and not in the temple.)

So our deep freeze began, and how could you not like the way Heavenly Father helped us enjoy it!  We had nights of single digit lows, sometimes minus, and days where the temperature maybe got up into the teens.  This is all Farenheit.  Of course in Centigrade, everything was MINUS!  The temple reopened on Jan 31.  But we didn't have far to walk from our cozy apartments that kept the same constant temperatures we had set in the low 70's, to the temple where the temperature was equally comfortable.  But then we needed to go to Chernigov on a Sunday that was COLD so we just dressed with more layers than worn previously.

We are at the bus stop, having walked a half mile.  JD was grateful for his balaklava to keep his head warm.  I had a hat and two hoods over my head!  The hand was only ungloved for taking the previous picture.  It was 6:45 am and the temperature was about -12 and it was Feb 12.  But we made it there and back enjoying our Sunday worship and visit with the hardy saints that came to church that Sunday.

Our work at the temple continued.  This couple was married civilly and took photos outside the temple prior to their reception in the chapel and then the temple sealing in the evening.  It was good planning to have fancy jackets for the occasion!  This was Feb 18 and it was about 18 degrees but sunny and calm.

The next day we went to Chernigov again.  This time it was only -2 and at 6:45a, just a week later, it was morning twilight!  I always marvel at the babushkas who set up their little stands to sell cups of hot coffee, mostly, and some other snacks.  What time did she arrive?  How did she keep warm?

Before our bus arrived, she did have two vehicles stop!  I don't know how much money she makes on a small drink made from hot water in her thermos, but obviously it is necessary for her living or she wouldn't be there.  (She wasn't there the Sunday before.)

Arriving back that afternoon to our temple grounds, we took this photo of the temple with the red crab apples that have been beautiful ornaments all winter long.  Soon the returning birds will enjoy them

On February 22, also a new moon, the temperature rose to 37.  In the days that followed temperatures remained above freezing, and the low one night was even above freezing!  We had sunshine and even some rain.  Though there was some more snow, the sun in the daytime melted more than fell.  The winds were mostly warm, also melting the snow.  Spring will come.