I'm baaaack :)

Hi everyone! Boy it's been a busy couple of days here in Zaphorizia. We broke our computer so I couldn't update, Rich had to buy a new one. I also broke the phone, the one and only time I actually got to use the phone and I broke it. Rich had to walk 2 miles to the store to get a new sims card to put in it. I was not popular that night.

We did end up going to Alexanders house the other night, it was alot of fun. They live in a very small apartment, and have little, yet made us such a wonderful supper. We had borsht, potatoes, fish, fried garlic bread, grapefruit, eggs, pickles and to drink we had brandy,beer,tomato juice and tea. Yes, it was an odd combonation, but all very good. His adult children were there and his daughter played piano for us. Alexander is the nicest man I have ever met. For those of you coming to Zaphorizia, I highly recommend asking for him to be your taxi driver. I will get his car# and post it, then you can have your facilitator ask for him to come for you.

I have been to the dentist 5 times this week and I have atleast 2 more visits scheduled. Yesterday Alexander took me to the dentist, and when I was back in the room getting worked on (which I'm SURE the dentist is a little 'drill happy') Alexander had to leave, so he came back to the room and said, "Yula, Yula, I go now" I didn't know if he was coming back, so I said "call Victor and tell him". Remember, we are Yula and Victor here. So, he called Rich and told him "Yula in hospital, smoke coming out of her mouth" So, Rich gets all worried that I'm in the hospital, ( he didn't come with me because he had to walk to the store to buy this new computer) So he said, Yula's in the hospital with smoke coming out of her mouth?? Alexander said "Da", so Rich said , "you mean the dentist?" Alexander said, "oh, yes, dentist." and he was right, there was smoke coming out of my mouth, I swear they were using a hot glue gun in there too!

Alexander wasn't there when I got done, so I decided to walk home. It's about a mile and a half I suppose. The first half wasn't bad because I was relatively sure I was going to right way. A man stopped his car and got out and asked me something in Russain, I just shook my head and said "English" and kept walking. Then I did'nt recognize things anymore. I just kept walking hoping I would see something I remebered, but I didn't for quite a while. I did feel a little bit worried, I had no phone or anything and didn't have any idea where our apartment was at this point. But I'm like a homing pigeon, I guess, because I kept walking and eventually saw vendor stands that looks familiar. Rich was a little worried when I finally got home.

Yesterday Alexander took us to a museum, the Peter I museum I think. It was really really neat. There was one room there that we spent the most time in that has 'freak show' people in wax figures. One guy from Mexico had a tiny head identical to his regular head on top of his head. So it was a normal looking man with a little matching head on his head. Weird. One guy had only one eye in the center of his face,he was American. One had no lower body, american too. But, the most facinating thing was there was jars all over with fetus's in them. Deformed fetus's, to the extreme. These poor little babies were terribly deformed, like with the brain on the outside, and claw like hands and feet, and the internal organs on the outside and things like that. One baby had one eye in the center of her face, one had two heads on one body. These were REAL, not wax, not replicas. We took pics, I will have Shane post them.

Alexander also took me and Lindsey and Alex down to the Dneiper River to walk out on it frozen. We had to walk about a mile to get to it and it was FREEZING that day, it was not my favorite excursion.

Tomorrow he wants to take us to a sauna. I'm not crazy about this idea, so I think I will stay home with alex.