Days Eighty-Five to Eighty-Eight.

Yet another week of the quarintine. When we finally start school again on Monday, we're going to be teaching an extra hour every day. Since I can't go anywhere far away (they keep on telling us that "we could start working any day now") I've been trying to see as much as Kiev as possible.

While exploring downtown the past few days, I've seen some interesting things. Like this cat made out of forks. It's a cork. Or a fat.



Today it was raining all day. I slept until 11 am because it was so dark out, I thought it was still early morning.



Around 3:30 pm, the rain stopped and the sky partially cleared. It's so beautiful.

Day Eighty-Four.

Poland pictures that please me. [And maybe you, too]

Trolley tracks are the so quaint.



Sporting my $15 Polish boots. Oh yah.



Outdoor market.




Isn't the kitchen cozy?



In the Old Town Square.



Huge, hallow head sculpture. It was in front of the church in the square.



Inside of the Balloon Hostel.



Outside of Warsaw Castle.



Street artist.



Warsaw Castle in Krakow.



The rain was trying to fill up the empty fountain.



Warsaw Castle.



Genevieve and I switched clothes for a day.



View from our room in the Balloon Hostel.

Day Eighty-Three.

April 26, 1986 - 1:26 am

This is how the Village names surrounding Chornobyl now appear. When leaving villages here, the sign is simply the name of the town crossed out. These signs though, tell everyone that they are affected by radiation and are not inhabitated. [There are some older people who still live in these villages. Disregarding the warnings and threat of radiation, they chose to return to their homes, where they had lived for their lives. They aren't functioning towns, however.]



Gas masks worn by people working in the radiation. While some had this protection, for the most part people were exposed with nothing to protect them. To get an idea of how extreme the radiation was- the normal range for radiation was between 15 and 20. Immediatly after the explosion, it rose to over 3000. In most cases, it was off the charts. This cloud of radiation affected most promienently northern Ukraine and Belarus, but quickly spread as far as Sweden. Eventually, an increased level of radiation was documented in the US, Canada, Japan, parts of China, Russia and all of Europe, all resulting from the Chornobyl Explosion.



In Prypiat, there were around 50,000 residents prior to the accident. 17,000 of these were children. These are just some of the pictures of children who lived there. This city was young and considered to be one of the "hot spots" to live. Soviet Nuclear Power Plant workers lived there and worked in Chornobyl.


The crowns of flowers represent the heads of two birds, while their bodies are made up of clothe and photographs. The white bird on the left is everything good in life and the black bird on the right is everything that is bad or challenging. Together they form life.



Pictures taken just last year in Prypiat.



And again.



School children from Japan sent these paper cranes to show their empathy for the people affected by the explosion. [There was a small side exhibit of the after effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima- it was terrible.]



This painting is done entirely with words. It's a poem entitle "Uprooted" and is about the affects that the expolsion has had on the heritage of the Ukrainians who were forced to leave their homes and history behind. The artist is American, but I can't remember her name.



A baby pig with two bodies and one head. Because radiation can't be seen, heard, tasted or felt, it's affects are still being explored.



Photographs of the destruction of an entire town. The radiation was so thick there, they had no choice but to bury it under ground.



On the right side of the part of the river that looks like a lake is Chornobyl. The city of Pripyat is on the left of this body of water. It was hit the worse with radiation. Scientists say that it won't be safe to inhabit for at least another 500 years.



Artwork and pictures depicting the effects of the expolsion.



At the Museum there was a lot of symbolism. The rootless apple tree, depicted here, is one of the main symbols. It represents knowledge, and how we can use it for good and evil, to destroy or build up.



This is what village signs look like in Ukraine. These are just some of the villages that had to be evacuated because of explosion.



The New York Times had half of the front page and part of the second page covering the Chornobyl nuclear explosion. The Soviet paper had five sentences.



Aerial photograph of the power plant the day after the explosion.



A model of how the Nuclear Power Plant worked and where it went wrong.



The time stopped at 1:26 am on April 26, 1986 when reactor #4 exploded at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Days Seventy-Nine to Eighty-One.

Anna, Emily, Genevieve and I decided to explore some of Kiev, since we had the time. It's shocking to me to observe the difference between how we view the city now versus the first week we were here. The metro was terrifying and confusing, it was impossible to get anywhere without calling someone for help. Now, we know how to cross lines on the metro (luckily there are only three different lines- blue, red and green. Despite this, all Metro signs in the city are green. I find it quite curious) and walk around the city without getting completely lost.

Kiev is now almost friendly feeling, at times. Like today, when a random guy came up and took a picture of all four of us, without us asking. Or when we thought these two guys were following us, but it just turned out that one of them lives in Canada now and wanted to talk to us because he heard us speaking English. Or when Lynsie and I were on the Metro late tonight, all squished in like sardines, and these two young guys tap me on the arm and say, 'sit girls', and then give us their seats, even though they still didn't get off for at least four more stops. Yesterday on the trolley bus, the person who goes around checking to make sure everyone has a pass or you can buy a ticket from him, came towards me. Now, it sometimes works to just say "preznoy" (which means "pass"). I almost always just take mine out to show them though, because they will oftentimes make me even after I say preznoy. He was a cute little old man, (which is unusual becuase they're usually grumpy old ladies who look like they want to slap me). He walked right up to me, took my hand, patted it, smiled, patted my hand again and then just walked on to the next person. I'm not sure what it was all about, but it made my day. I love nice people.

Kiev is the prime place to go if you want to see really random things. Like this rainbow arch over the road,



or a birdhouse on a tree in the middle of the city.



Raindrops.



I was really pleased to be in the picture. Though it looks like it's midnight, it's really only about 5:30 pm.



It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It's so pretty downtown lately- lights are coming out and decorations are going up.

Days Seventy-Six to Seventy-Eight.

I decided to embrace my domestic side and knit a scarf this weekend. I forgot that I knew how to knit, but once I started, it was done within a day.



The whole swine flu scare has put a damper on my activities here- that and the fact that it's dark by 4:00 pm. Maybe I'll have to knit a hat next.

[Despite the fact that we can't understand eachother, Olga, very excited to see me knitting, taught me a different way to knit and wants to teach me how to make a hat- she even measured my head. It's so nice to have an activity that we can both understand and connect with.]

Day Seventy-Five.

Aushwitz and Birkenau

I got the chance to go to the Birkenau and Aushwtiz concentration camps while in Poland. While it wasn't a fun way to spend six hours of my day, I'm really glad I went. I've learned about the Holocaust in every history class since I can remember, but actually being there made it that much more real. The hardest part was seeing the rooms that were filled with the prisoners belongings- suitcases, pots and pans, toothbrushes, babies clothes, shoes and two tons of human hair as well as a bolt of clothe that was made from human hair.