Ukrainian Family Pictures

This post goes along with my previous blog post:)

Here are some pictures from Lviv.

My mom, Ya (yes, that's me), Katia (my cousin), Lyena (my sister). 

Lyena and I by the statue of Diana….I am a little under dressed.

My gorgeous mama and sister. If only I were used to wearing high heels everywhere…:)

Katya and her hubby—Andriy. Men wear wedding bands on their right hand in Ukraine.

And that’s me…wearing NOT high heels and looking very much out of place and like a tourist.

And this is my sister, me and my cousin in front of our grandma’s place. Lots of memories were created sitting on top of that “fence”.

I have two cousins on my dad’s side of the family. This is one of them—Misha (Michael). He is only half a year older than Lyena.  I feel very old… (-“Do you remember that old cousin Lyana? -- Oh yeah! Her! --The one that already has three kids.-- Yes! The one that doesn’t wear high heels all the time!”)

Moving on to Kyyiv. My chubby Petrik, nephew,  and sweet Mika (sons of my cousin Katia).

Babushka Maya and I (my mom’s mom). No, not all women are blonde in Ukraine.

Group picture, of course. 

Smile, Babushka Maya!:)

Miss you all!!! And hope to see you soon again.

Tsiom,

Lyana

Lyana’s Trip to Ukraine

No matter what kind of passport I carry in my purse, I will always stay Ukrainian in my heart (cannot truly say I will be Ukrainian in my mind because I do think in English).

A couple of weeks ago, I took a quick trip to Ukraine because of emergency circumstances. I was so happy to see my family! Probably more happy than ever before…Maybe living so far away from any kind of home made me miss my beloved Ukrainian extended family very much.

I was able to visit three places:

1. Dubno—in Rivne region. A town of about 40,000 where I was born. The actual hospital where I was born looked like a barn, no exaggeration. Now it’s a mental institution. Everything in Dubno looked so much smaller from what I remember—it’s a well known phenomenon called in Russian “kogda derevia bili bolshimi”-“when the trees used to be big”.

2. Lviv-in far Western Ukraine. My REAL Ukrainian city of Leo—the place where I lived from 3 years old till I went to UT to be a foreign exchange city. This time, I was able to see the city with the eyes of a tourist. I couldn’t believe how much it has changed even in the last 3 years. The city is preparing for EURO 2012-soccer championship that Ukraine is co-hosting with Poland. My city was revamped, especially the downtown part. Although the suburbs and poor areas still look the same…

3. Kyyiv-the capital. I flew in to Kyyiv, spent the night and left for Dubno. On the way back, I was able to spend half a day in Kyyiv, just looking around while riding in the car. Also a very beautiful, renovated city. Most of my extended family lives there. I wasn’t able to take many pictures of the city itself, unfortunately. Hopefully—next time.

Katia (my cousin) and I posing in front of the official Dubno emblem—this old fortress wall.

Right across the street, you can see this—A Music College. The reason it’s special to my whole family is because my grandpa, Vasyl Hornostai, used to be its director for many years. It definitely doesn’t look like it, but this establishment is quite famous in Western Ukraine. We used to go in there when we were little, feeling so privileged since our grandpa was in charge:)

This is the House of Culture, I believe—all decorated with Ukrainian flags, of course. You’d never guess that it used to be the Palace of Soviet Pioneers, a place where kids who were Pioneers (and most everyone was) could come and participate in different clubs, such as choir, arts, etc.

This is the apartment building where my dad used to live when he first met my mom. My grandma, his brother and family still live here.  Since my other grandma’s apartment building was across the street, we, as kids, used to run back and forward dozens times a day, just visiting and eating sweets:)

And this is my other grandma’s (my mom’s mom) former apartment building—the place where I lived when I was a baby-baby, on the third floor, end unit with that white balcony:) I know, they all look the same.

And this is some of my mom’s family—my aunt Halia, my sister Lyena, my mom, my cousin Katia and my uncle Sasha. We are standing in front of the entrance to the apartment building where I spent at least a month every summer.

In that spot, we spent hundreds of hours playing….and being chastised by other “babushkas” for being too loud or bouncing the ball too much.

And of course, we had to take a picture of the garage that used to belong to my grandpa. It was a very prestigious thing to own a garage back in the day.

And that’s me, “stealing” the cherries from the cherry trees in the backyard. I think they do belong to someone, but as kids, we used to pick them all the time.

I will never forget this place—"sadochok” or daycare. It was a few steps away from my grandma’s place, so I think we were 2 when we walked there on our own with my oldest cousin (who was 4 at the time) “supervising”. Do you like the chicken with the golden egg? My kids know that folk tale very well:)

The day after we arrived to Lviv, my sister had her second part of graduation celebrations (yes, high school graduates had multiple days of celebration). So she went to the part where at the Dominican Cathedral, their graduating class was blessed with good future, so to speak. A couple of pictures of her for you:

And here are some more photos for you from my architectural Lviv:

   

   

The City Hall is in the background.

People live there, and on the first floor is a cozy cafe.

A picture of the policemen for you:) And Andriy, my cousin’s husband. I was pretending to take a picture of him and not the policemen:)

  What’s amazing is that all these beautiful buildings are just within walking distance from each other. And there many-many others through out the city.

Antique book market.

 

This is what the houses look like in most parts of Lviv.

Tramvai—we still use these trams for public transportation.

 

And then I found this:

      

Sorry, my “W” got cut off. Apparently there is a chain of “Watsons” stores in Ukraine:) Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t get a discount because her daughters married name is Watson (yes, she did inquire about that-hahaha).

I know this blog post is not about Japan at all. See? Now you get educated in how things are in Eastern Europe too: ) We are so multi-cultural!

Hope you enjoyed a short journey through the streets of my native land:)

Good night,

Lyana

Wifeless camping -- not for the faint of heart

I know the summer has been passing quickly because there is now a backlog of blog posts that have yet to be published.  This, as you may well have guessed, is one of them. 

Not too long ago (just a month), I took the kids camping.  We had been planning for the entire family to go, but Lyana had to leave town suddenly.  Well, we didn't want to disappoint the kids too much by cancelling altogether, so I said I was brave enough to take all three of them camping.  Overnight.  Away from home.  Without my wife.  I was actually really excited to do it.  Two other families decided to go with us (or did we go with them?  I'm not sure.  Oh, that reminds me, I think I still owe one of them 1400 yen for spotting us the campsite fee.  Honey, could you pay that for me, please?).  Anyway, I believe that camping is easier when they (the kids) have friends (someone else's kids) to play with.

We traveled about an hour from Misawa, near the town Nanbu (named for an old samurai clan).  We didn't plan a whole lot of activities, because all the kids really cared about was 1) being outside  2) sleeping in a tent and 3) S'mores.  That's camping (in no particular order).

So #1: being outside.  The origninal plan was to hike up the mountain, then visit the nearby Hokoji temple.  We parked the cars and started up the road to where the trail was supposed to be.

 

After 15 minutes of not finding the trail, the group unanimously voted to visit the temple first, and find the trail later.

The temple was easier to find because it was right next to us already.  I think I've already done a post on Hokoji temple, so I'll keep the captions short.

Alex and John on a little red bridge.

 

More people on the little red bridge, watching the big fish swimming aimlessly in the pond.

Lizzie and Katya befriending a moss-covered rock.

Katya and Bridget sitting on an entirely different red bridge, which is to say that it's not the same red bridge as in the three previous pictures.

Mark and Alex on the non-red bridge that leads to the restrooms.

  

More children on the first red bridge, watching the fish.  I think these photos are out of order.

Mark makes a funny face.  Not sure why; usually he smiles at the camera.

Mark on the other red bridge, mentioned previously but not to be confused with the first red bridge, the one above the fish pond.  This one has a pagoda.

This is what the bridge and pagoda would look like lying down.  I forgot to flip the photo before I added it to the blog, so it's easier to just have you turn your head than for me to change it now.  So turn your head.

This is Mark on a stone path, next to a fish pond, not by the first red bridge, but by the second red bridge, which is also not the third red bridge because that one was the same as the first red bridge.

Mark and Becca on the stairs leading up to the big pagoda, the same one you turned your head to see earlier.

Lots of statues.  People like to toss money at their feet. 

Mark and Becca on the steps below some Torii gates.

We couldn't figure out exactly what kind of shrine/temple this one was.  The torii gates are Shinto, while most of the statues and the temple were reminiscent of Buddhism.  One member in our group spoke Japanese, so she asked a caretaker and apparently the Hokoji temple is a little bit of both.

Okay, remember I said that we didn't find the trailhead earlier?  Well, after the temple we DROVE up that paved road (strange concept), and found a parking lot where we parked (I'm on a roll now).  We found a trail head and started hiking it (keep it coming) and walked and walked and walked until we couldn't walk any further.  Not because we were tired (it was only like 10 minutes) but because the trail was blocked by a mess of fallen trees.  Impassable.  We turned around and found a fork in the trail (not a "Honey, I dropped a fork in the garbage disposal" kind of fork, a branch in the trail, but not a tree branch, though there were lots of tree branches on the trail, some with trees still attached, which I've already mentioned.  I'm talking about a fork, I mean, a branch . . . you know what I mean).  This fork branch led nowhere, but the view was nice. 

And then we went back to the parking lot.  Oh, I forgot to mention that we met a Japanese couple on the trail, and they said that we took the wrong trail.  The mountain trail was on the other side of the parking lot!!  So we decided to . . . go set up camp.  It was time for fire and number 2 (I meant number two on the "what kids care about" list.  I don't know what you're thinking). 

So here's our campsite.  You can rent the "treehouses" or you can set up a tent.  It's much cheaper to set up the tent.  But I hear the treehouses (which are really just tiny cabins resting on a giant metal beam) are not too shabby.  

 

And finally, #3:  S'mores.  I didn't have a picture of the actual S'mores, but you can imagine it.  There's the fire, there are the kids and eventually they ate some S'mores.

We were going to do some more activities, because there are lots of other things to do around Nanbu, but I figure that we can do those another time, on a day trip.  Next time.  If you want information on Nanbu and how easy it is to get there, please let me know.

Robert