MORE IMPRESSIONS

• We haven't seen the sun yet, although as I sit by the window and write this the sun is trying to shine through the clouds for the first time since we arrived.
• Driving to church on Sunday afternoon, the road was not busy with a lot of traffic.  Our driver, a Norwegian (sp.?) missionary, was stopped for driving too fast!  A patrol officer standing by the road with hand held radar caught him.
• The water in our building was off quite a bit this weekend.  It was off several hours on Saturday afternoon, and then was off again all of Sunday morning .  Frank didn't get his morning shower!
• The ladies here like to be very fashionable.  Knee-high high-heeled boots, nice coats with fur collars (not old-fashioned fur collars, but very trendy looking fur), make-up, hair, etc., all really nice.  I felt rather clunky!
• Drinking water is brought into the building in large 5-gallon containers.  We use this water for drinking and cooking.  We go down to the office and get a new container when we're getting low.  The tap water is used only for laundry, dishwashing, and showers.  The water in our kitchen tap has a distinct sulphur smell. 
• No tv for us at this time.  We could get a satellite dish, but the channels are basically all in Russian or Ukrainian, there is one English-language channel (BBC news), although we could pay more and get some other English channels.  We'll wait and see how we feel about it.  Right now we're getting our news from the internet, watching the nightly broadcast of Katie Couric on CBS News.  Not our favorite, but it works.  Checking other news channels for more stories.
• Having long, long winter evenings is an adjustment.  It's almost dark by 4pm, and by 8pm we're thinking it's bedtime!
• We realized we were spoiled in India.  We could go almost anywhere and find someone who spoke fairly decent English.  In fact, we could go to the city and never have to use Kannada, our local language, at all.  Lots of English bookstores.  In Ukraine very few people speak English, although many want to learn.  No books in English, except for what we have with us or what the other missionaries have. 

More next week.