Second Hand Blog...

Well, it was another Ukrainian day here. As Angie posted in the last blog, I took 10 people to the water park today. We took Vita's friend Ira,Jennifer's friend Luda, Yana's friend Oksana, a brother and sister that a friend of ours knows, Alena and Maret, and one of the teachers at the summer camp,Marina. We also took Jennifer's boyfriend, but I cannot remember his name. I know that is pretty bad that a dad does not remember his daughter's boyfriend's name. Maybe I am in denial that I have a 15 yr old daughter that is dating. It all started out needing to get money exchanged. I know I should not have done this on a Sunday, especially knowing the amount that I was going to need. But I did , and we had to go to 6 different places to get the money. Some of those first places were open, but they refused to accept my $100 bills. They said they were too old. For future travelers I can not stress how important it is to have crisp, new looking, US dollars when you come. (seems as thought Mrs. Kellett mentioned this to Mr. Kellett in the past, but Mr. Kellett poo-pooed Mrs. Kellett......) I think the other thing that scared them away was the amount, so after the first denial we at least got smart and only did $100 at a time. We got to the place where the bus was suppose to pick people up, but there was no bus. We called the number on the brochure and we found out that the bus only picks up at 9 am. We were there at 10:30. Since we had 11 people it was not an easy taxi ride to the park since it is an hour away. So the girls started flagging down cars. (appears he is letting our daughters hitchhike!!) The first several would not take us since it was so far away. We finally found one that would take us for 150 grevna, about 30 US. So five people piled into that car and took off. The rest of us waited and finally found another car to take us. He wanted 200 grevna, but I was more interested in getting there than arguing about the price so we agreed. I think he was surprised that all six of us got into his little car. I was fortunate to ride in the front. We finally all made it to the water park about 11:30. We thought the price dropped at noon, but it actually did not go down until 2:00. So I paid full price to get us all in. This is not your typical Ukrainian attraction. This is very western, with very western prices. Total to get in was $30 each and they did not take credit/debit cards. By this time all the money that I had exchanged was gone so I needed some more. Fortunately one of the workers agreed to exchange some money for me after giving us the normal run around about my money being too old. I can not say enough about this water park. We were there for about 6 hours and the kids (and me) had a great time. There are 10 large water slides, a huge swimming pool and a giant kids area. I wish I would have known about this when the rest of the family was here. The three boys would have loved it. We had a good lunch at the park, fried chicken and french fries. We have a lot of pictures, but those will have to wait until I get home as the laptop is running too slow to upload anything. The park closes at 6 and this is when the bus leaves to go back to the drop off site. We needed our tickets to show that we were actually there all day,or you could not ride the bus home. Vita made it very clear to me that I needed to keep track of my ticket. Guess who lost her ticket....Vita!! She was scared that they were going to kick her off the bus, but fortunately they are not really organized on the bus when they check tickets. They came up one side first and then the other. This gave Ira enough time to pass her ticket to Vita so she could ride home with us. I told her it would have been a long walk. The bus ride was long and hot, just like all of them in Ukraine. We finally made it back to the drop off site at 7:15. Dinner at camp is at 7 so I treated the kids to McDonalds. It was the most I have ever spent at McDonalds in my life. I don't know how to get a McDonald's franchise, but if you are looking you need to consider a foreign country. The prices are higher than the US. They do not have a dollar menu and the lines are long anytime you go. They have to be the most profitable resturants McDonalds has operating. I finally sent them back to camp at 9 and made it into the apartment at 9:30 with about 3 dollars in my pocket. All in all it was a great day. I can't count the times they each told me thank you. I just wish that I had more money so I could have taken more of the kids with us. Maybe next time. Tomorrow appears to be a pretty low key day. The girls want to see a movie. The new Will Smith movie. I have read that it is not very good, but since it is in Russian it shouldn't matter to me. At least thepopcorn is good.