The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine

A few months ago I was listening to the Eagles and as they sang that line I thought to myself "that line pretty much sums up winter in Ukraine". Then of course winter in Ukraine proceeded to show me I knew nothing as it was snowy and sunny for most of December and the first part of January. But it could not hold off forever and finally a few weeks ago reverted back to its dreary gray self. We had about two weeks of foggy, semi-freezing weather during which the snow turned to mud and the sun refused to shine. And it took me until today to remember the lyrics to Desperado. Of course today it snowed and the sun came out so the lyrics no longer apply. Just my luck.

Weather aside things have been pretty busy for us. We took a trip up to Chernigov to have an In Lumine meeting with the International Outreach director of Desiring God. It was a good meeting and we are happy about working more closely with DG to distribute good God-centered Christain resources to Russian speaking people throughout the world.

Sunday night we started a men's bible study. I came up with a bunch of manly lessons from the life of David and we are going to study them for the next 6-8 weeks. The first one was that repentance is manly.

Wednesday night we had our monthly senior citizen evening. Out of all the things we've been doing I managed to take a couple pictures of the evening.

The last couple days we've just been preparing for different bible studies, going to bible studies, and thinking up bible studies. Oh, and enjoying have highspeed internet after 3 months of pestering the phone company. It came on just in time for us to watch Colbert interview Paul McCartney.

Today our lives were changed, forever

This morning there were a handful of errands that we needed to do before 10 am; make photocopies of songs, meet a babushka in the rynok to buy her brown beans, stop by the phone company to find out about internet, and pick up a parcel from the post.

Upon stepping outside I was dismayed to find it was raining. Especially as I had just checked the thermometer which said that it was about at freezing. As I stepped out onto our walkway my fears were confirmed: the rain was freezing when it hit the ground and there was a thin layer of ice over everything.

After slipping and sliding through our errands we successfully navigated the post office and opened our package to find ice traction cleats to slip on over our shoes. Yes, my parents saved the day by sending us exactly what we needed.

After taking them for a test spin around our yard I threw them in my car and drove to the rehab center where I concluded that it would be best to use my new cleats instead of driving down the steep hill to the rehab center's driveway. About four steps into the slippery walk down the hill I realized that my life would never be the same. No longer will the weather hold me in its icy clutches of fear. I am master of my destiny now...as long as I have my handy cleats.

Recommended Reading

For those of you who don't know, my sister and brother-in-law have a blog in which they reflect upon life and it is appropriately titled "Sarah and Shawn Reflect".

Shawn's last post had me laughing for most of last night so I thought I would put it out there for our readers to be entertained as well, it's called "Cleaning up the Environment". Click over there, have a good laugh and don't forget to keep the Environment clean.

A little narcissism (everyone's doing it)

A couple months ago during the thick of the remodel we were tagged by Lawren. We forgot all about it amid the craziness of all our projects paired with no internet. Well something happened to remind us of the tag: all of the sudden everyone we know has been tagged. So, at the risk of tagging becoming blasé, here are 7 random facts that most people probably don't know about us:

Liese:
I don't see the point of sports. I'm not very competitive and they mostly just bore me.

Was told numerous times as a child not to grow up too quickly and that I'd miss being a kid someday. Well guess what? I never have. Being an adult is way better.

Danny:
Talks to other cars (not drivers, cars) on the road as if they could hear and understand him.

Both:
Neither one of us can figure out how to re-feed the paper back into the printer/copier for double-sided copies and get it to come out the right way.

We think the German language is fun to interject in sentences. The fact that we only know 3 German words poses a problem.

We will add our own stipulations to anything to have the proverbial upper hand. Therefore we will only do 6. It makes us feel in control of the situation no matter how banal it may be.

Ukraine, Russia, and natural gas

People have been asking what is going on with Russia and Ukraine's dispute over natural gas and how that will affect us, so I figured I'd write what I know and what I think. (Reuters has a story about it here and the AP reports here )

Russia wants to sell Ukraine natural gas at a higher rate than Ukraine wants to pay (about $50 more per 1000 cubic meters), collect on the debt that Ukraine owes them for last year's gas, and continue piping gas through Ukraine to Europe at the same rate as usual. Ukraine wants to pay less for gas and is using the gas pipeline as a bartering chip. The debt that Ukraine owes Russia is from large industrial use of gas and since all large industries in Ukraine are owned by someone in parliament this means basically that Ukraine's lawmakers are not paying for gas that their companies are using. That makes the whole thing a little more sticky.

As of Jan. 1, 2009 Russia decided that since Ukraine didn't want to pay its debt or pay the price they were asking for gas that they would stop shipping gas to Ukraine. Ukraine was prepared for this (supposedly) and has enough gas stockpiled to last through the winter (they've been through this before). Ukraine agreed to leave Russia's pipelines open but Russia started to cut the amount of gas they were piping through to Europe and have blamed Ukraine saying Ukraine shut off the pipes.

This has left most eastern European countries with very little gas to make it through a cold snap while most western European countries have stockpiled gas and are not facing a gas crisis.

Generally a gas shortage tends to send prices up and so I see Russia as using this to leverage gas prices up as a worldwide recession is pushing gas prices down. But it is not helping Russia's image or reputation as a reliable gas supplier.

Who knows how this will end, but if Russia does not turn the gas back on they are shooting themselves in the foot in regards to international relations.

Merry Christmas, take 2

Today is Christmas in Ukraine. It seems like we've already celebrated it several times by now so it is not as exciting as it could be. Our church is having a special Christmas service tonight where we'll have dinner together, sing Christmas carols (I'm playing bass for a few of them), perform various skits (which Liese and I opted out of), generally celebrate Christ's birth. We'll let you know how it goes.

Other than that our plan today is to stay indoors as much as possible as it is freakin' freezing here. This was what I saw yesterday out our kitchen window as I made coffee:
This thermometer leans to the warm side in the winter because I installed it too close to the window. My car's thermometer measured it around -22 C (-7 F) but it warmed up to -16 (3) during the afternoon. Today it is colder by a couple degrees.

The sun has been shining which makes the cold beautiful.


Whenever the weather here starts to get a little cold the crazy fur hats come out. I've been carrying my camera around with me to take some pictures of all the hats and fur coats but I always am too cold or in too much of a hurry to stop and take pictures. But yesterday as I was in the market I figured I'd just do it so here is a sample of the winter garb here in Ukraine.


I'm pretty sure that the men have to be a certain age before they can wear the fur hats, but people tell me anyone can. I think they are just being nice to me since I'm a foreigner but the truth is that you have to go through some sort of rite of passage before you are allowed to wear a fur hat. That's why only men over 35 wear them. The same goes with women's fur hats but to a different degree as they have a wider variety of shapes and sizes.

The long awaited photos

People have been asking to see pictures of our new place so we finally caved in, cleaned things up a bit and took some pictures of the rooms that we have nearly completed. As an bonus there are also "before" pictures so everyone can see what we've actually done.

Kitchen and dinning room: after and before

Kitchen: before and after

Bathroom: before and after

Happy New Year!