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Hey there, everyone! Just passing another day in Ukraine. We've got our daily routine set up, coming downtown to the internet cafe is the highlight of our day.

Last night's anniversary dinner was quite different. We went to the restaurant (more like a pub) with the english menu. First we ordered our drinks. I've been on a pineapple juice kick lately, so I was very proud that I could order it in russian. Terry wanted orange juice, so he pointed to the juice on the menu and then an orange square on the window. Our server understood. Then we pointed out in the menu fries, onion rings and 2 orders of chicken fingers (very healthy, eh?) Well, a couple minutes later, the server came out with Terry's OJ, but not mine. Then a couple minutes after that, she came out with the onion rings. We kind of wanted everything together, but started eating anyway. After we finished those, she came out with the fries. OK...so then we ate those. When we had finished eating them, I still did not have my pineapple juice. Terry motioned to the server and pointed at his OJ and then at me. She nodded and spoke something we didn't understand, I imagine she was just letting us know that it was coming. So......we sat, and we sat, and we sat some more. About 15 minutes later I got my juice. It was in a tiny little glass, maybe 6 ounces. And it wasn't even all juice. It was about half juice and half foam. I guess they made it fresh from a pineapple. It was OK... a little warm and I finished it in 2 gulps. Then we waited forever for our chicken fingers. We wanted to complain, lucky for them we don't speak russian. Finally they came out, they were very good (but a little cold) We didn't finish them all, (we had 4 left) so we motioned to the server to package them up for us. She did so. Then we finished off with our yummy apple pies.
When we got the cheque, I noticed something strange. They are difficult to read because they are cyrillic. But from what I could see, we got charged 2 different amounts for our juices. One was 18 hryvnas and the other was 74 hryvnas. Terry took it up to a girl at the front who spoke a little english. He pointed at the item for 74 hyrvnas. Yup, she confirmed it...pineapple juice! WHAT???!!?? 74 hryvnas for that tiny glass of pineapple juice??? Yes, she said, that's how much it is! That converts to $16 Canadian. It was the most expensive thing we paid for. That will be the last time I order pineapple juice in a restaurant!!!
Then when we went to eat our leftovers this morning, there were only 3 chicken fingers in our package, not 4. Don't know what happened to the last one!

Not much else going on around here. Just passing our time until we leave on Wednesday. Our friend is helping us to get train tickets. We will be travelling on our own, so we're hoping to get 1 compartment to ourselves (there are usually 4 people in a compartment and they are super-tiny) Our friend has reserved us some first class tickets (2 beds per compartment) but they are quite expensive...$120/each. But I guess we're willing to pay that. Especially when we won't have a translator with us. We will have someone coming to help us board the train and someone to pick us up at the trainstation in Kiev. Phew.

That's all for now. We've been spending some serious time in prayer and looking forward to our next appointment.

Terry and Tara