This week's Most Useful Discovery

Ukraine is not the land of the jumbopack. Though there are exceptions, even at our Costco-like store, Metro, many of the "bulk" items are actually several single items wrapped together. Five bags of oatmeal, four cartons of juice, seven packages of nutmeg ... you get the picture.

The first Sunday of every month, I prepare trays of tea and cookies that we carry around as people chat after church. I make the tea at home and pour it into Thermoses (from Metro, actually). Even hours after I make the tea, plus a walk to church, sometimes through the snow, the tea is scalding hot when I pour it. I love me those Thermoses.

But the cookies are another matter. At the grocery store, most of the cookies come in rather small packages — fine for a household, but pretty cumbersome when providing cookies for 40.

To get bulk cookies, you can go to the store or to the outdoor market and buy them from a cookie seller. I ask for a kilo or 500 grams of a particular cookie, and the seller whips out a thin plastic bag and dumps all the cookies in. I usually buy four kilos, which fills up all the space in the bottom of our stroller.

This is what I've been doing for years now, but I've never been very pleased with the results. First, inevitably, a lot of the cookies crumble. Second, there are lots of really pretty cookies here, topped with cream or elaborate designs, but I always decline to buy them, fearing that they wouldn't hold up to the beating they'd get in the plastic bag.

This past week, the visiting professor for the Talbot-Kyiv Extension gave a lecture on the problem of evil on Wednesday night. We had no idea how many people to expect, so I needed a lot of cookies. I went to the market, expecting to wind up with bags and bags of cookies, half of which would crumble on the way home.

But, what did I spy, but a guy. A guy with a van full of bright-yellow boxes of cookies! They were the same kind of boxes that the bulk cookie sellers get their cookies delivered in, only smaller. The cookies were nicely lined up, and the boxes protected them, even when I stacked seven boxes in the bottom of the stroller. I even bought some beautiful, pink-and-yellow-cream-topped minicakes, and even after the trip home and then to the seminary, they looked lovely and springy as they waited to be devoured. Plus these cookie boxes are wrapped in plastic, which means they'll keep overnight without getting stale, unlike cookies in a bag.

So, for now on, it's cookies in a box for me.

Bad day for the dollar

Last night at Kiev Theological Seminary, Talbot professor Dr. Doug Geivett presented a lecture on the problem as evil. Because this is such an important topic, especially in this society, we opened the event up to nonseminary folks, too.

Since some people would be seeing the seminary for the first time, we wanted them to feel warmly welcomed and well-fed. A friend and I were charged with supplying tables of coffee and yummy snacks, so I spent a good part of the day carrying bags of cookies, pretzels, fruit, serving dishes, candles, etc., over to the seminary.

The first time I went out, in the morning, the casino across the street was changing dollars into 4.63 hrivna. That's a pretty bad rate, much lower than the 5.05 that we were accustomed to until about a month ago.

The next time I went past the casino, the dollar had dropped to 4.50. At about 10 p.m., on the way back from the event, it was at 4.36.

I know the casino is just trying to capitalize on people who didn't manage to find a better rate earlier in the day, but who MUST GAMBLE NOW, but I still found it unsettling.

Most Interesting redux

So, last week I thought the fish jumping from the tank was kinda cool. Today, however, when we arrived at the grocery store, one fish was already flopping about on the tile. Soon after he was rescued, another one made a break for it. And it scared the cool right out of me. I shrieked a little bit. It was embarrassing. Now I think they need to put the lid back on the tank.

This week's Most Interesting Moment

I've blogged before about walking to the supermarket to check out the fish. This remains a favorite pastime for our little guy -- plus they've added a tank of crawdads.

In fact, we visited the fish this week, and as we were watching them, one jumped out of the tank (which is taller than me; the fish wranglers have to stand on a chair to scoop the fish out when someone buys one).

Poor fishie started flopping around on the floor just a few feet from us. We and another shopper explained the situation to the lady who was in charge of the fish counter that day. She finished up the transaction she was in the middle of, then calmly walked over and tossed the fish back in. He swam right away, so I guess the journey to the air-breathing world didn't hurt him. Dietrich, of course, found the whole incident utterly fascinating.

Annual visit to the Botanical Gardens

The lilacs are in bloom here, so we took a break recently to enjoy them, and to enjoy an excursion with our very pregnant friends Oksana and Zhenya. These pictures are all thanks to Zhenya's excellent eye. I'm thrilled to have such a lovely version of this iconic Kyiv image.



The gardens are pretty big, so I had never seen the plot of magnolia trees.



It rained earlier in the day, and the long worms crawling all over the sidewalk were a source of fascination. Dietrich insisted on calling them snakes.



We went to the gardens about the same time last year. Last year's baby is this year's big boy.

The week in work

Last week, I made a brochure, thus completing Step One in a fund-raising push for Kyiv Theological Seminary that should keep me occupied through December. The seminary has been offered a $450,000 matching grant, and we have until Dec. 31 to raise funds.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling rather out of my league.

I keep kicking myself for not paying more attention in the one public relations class that was required in my undergrad journalism program. I know a lot about presenting news. In a newspaper. Brochures? Letters to foundations? These are unfamiliar ground.

But exciting ground! I don't think I would have said that two weeks ago, before I started talking to people, gathering information, trying to gain a sense of where the seminary is and how it hopes to grow. At the beginning, I mostly just felt overwhelmed and frightened (my general responses when I try to lay all the responsibility on myself rather than focusing on doing my best for the Glory of God).

The seminary's story is a good one, and I'm going to get the chance this year to tell it in many different ways to many different people. I'm looking forward to the process.