Pillow Fight

Goodmorning to you all in the US!!
It's 8:15am there, and 4:15pm here. The girls are here and watching Kim Possible and eating grapes so I thought I would hop on here and write a little bit.

Today we managed to get the form we needed, finally and tomorrow we are going to Kharkov for the fun of it and hopefully to an internet cafe where we can upload some pictures. We are going with the lady we are staying with Olga, and she was more than happy to go along as she has some errands to run in Kharkov as well. I told her we wanted to go shopping and site-see, etc. so she arranged for a taxi to take us and spend the day with us taking us here and there. We could have taken the bus, but then it takes two hours to get there and two hours back - twice the time if we go by car. Plus the busses look pretty gross and they are packed with people . . fogging up the widows,etc. It doesn't look pleasant. It is so cheap to travel by taxi with the exchange rate, it seems worth it to us to go by taxi. So, with any luck, we'll get the pictures posted :)

We hope to find James a coat and also one for Marina. She wants one that is black with pink on it. Everyone here wears black. Everyday, top and bottom, shoes . . .it's all black all the time. I wonder if their underwear is black also . . .probably not, it's probably hot pink or red with gold bling-bling on it!! That's what their shoes and purses all have . . .gold decrotive do-dads all over them - belts too!! The more bling the better here!! The other thing we've noticed is that no one wears glasses! Only a couple people have we seen wearing glasses. . . well, except for sunglasses. That probably makes us stand out right there. You only see a very FEW people wearing tennis shoes too. Most women ware what I would describe as knickers or short pants that stop just below the knee and then they wear tall boots with stiletto (sp?) heels. ALL OF THEM - no kidding. Well, the old women don't, but young women to late middle aged all wear them! Some are so pointed that I wonder how they keep from sinking in between cracks in the sidewalks etc. It's crazy! Women dress very feminine and even dare I say . . . tramp like? Their skirts are worn VERY short (with the boots that come above the knee), and everything is skin tight leaving not a whole lot to the immagination :) However, most have the body to pull off such a waredrobe, since they are all skinny as a rail!!!

I just looked outside because the dog (with 3 legs) was barking and there are people coming out of the woods with bicycles that have baskets hooked on either side of them FULL of wild mushrooms. Today the orpahage even had the kids in the woods collecting mushrooms. I'm not sure what kind they are, but they are delicious! Even James likes them and he's not a huge fan of the fungi family :)

Earlier the girls got into a huge pillow fight with James. 3 on 1 and they did a number on him!! The pillows are very heavy since they are feather pillows and about 1/3 larger than our pillows at home. They are huge square pillows and very heavy. Anyway, at one point they grabbed hold of the sheets and blakets and pulled, ultimately sliding James right off the bed and onto the floor! It was quite a scene and they had a blast! I took some pictures of him trying to defend himself against 3 little girls, but I'm not sure if they will be blurry since I was laughing while I was trying to take the pictures :) They had fun and so did he. In fact they wore him out and he fell asleep while they were watching Kim Possible and then they went up and attacked him again!! I love it! If I did that he'd yell at me and wonder what the heck is wrong with me! They can get away with it.

Okay, well enough for now. I may post again tomorrow after we get back from Kharkov - probably around 9 or 10am. your time.