Walking On Ice And Snow In Hilly Kyiv
Yesterday it really snowed hard - people on the street waiting for trams looked like snow men! Then, last night, it poured - all night - and by this morning everything had frozen. Ed had to go to a training session for the new lawyers at the new office in Bila Tserkva (that's White Church in English), the suburb where the second defender office is located (Kharkiv being the first), and he had to leave at 7:45 to get there by 11 a.m. Belle and I slept in until about 8 and then I took her for her morning walk after her breakfast. It was really, really slick out there. I opened the door, stepped outside and almost fell on my butt. But I grabbed on to the apartment door handle and recovered my balance (thank you Pilates) and managed to goose step my way up the hill to the road to Gintama. Belle HATED the conditions. She was, to put it mildly, outraged. She kept looking at me with eyes that said "you have got to be kidding - do you really expect me to walk on or squat down on this?" But we both soldiered on, without much joy on Belle's part (or mine for that matter). She got right down to business and we were back in the apartment within 15 minutes.
I really do like living in this little apartment. I can sit at my desk looking out at the snow covered roofs of Kyiv, or curl up on the sofa or the eating nook-reading bed with Dr. Zhivago, or look out the very big window in the kitchen as I fix our homey little meals. It was so nice to come in from the icy streets this morning with Belle, sit down on our entry bench and wipe her little feet, hang my parka and scarf on our coat rack, and walk into the kitchen, fix my little breakfast (Nestle's Fitness, a pot of Fortnum & Mason's Earl Grey Tea, orange juice) and sit down at our cozy little table to eat it, after turning on the BBC Radio 4 Today Program on the computer, broadcast over my wireless speakers which sit on our drinks cart (it has wheels, so that with one swift movement the speakers either face the kitchen/dining or the living/bedroom/office area - it's brilliant!).
I walked up to Sofiyskiy for my pilates session with Katya at 1:30. I don't know how these Ukrainian women do it - it is so slippery outside, and instead of concrete sidewalks they have these ochre colored brick shaped tiles that are some sort of ceramic and are slippery as eels. I risk life and limb by choosing to walk in the cobble stoned streets (which give one's feet a little purchase), through slush and puddles and God only knows whatever else is under all the slush and black snow, to avoid those lethal tiles. Meanwhile the women here are wearing leather boots with skinny high heels and seem to have no problem at all. They are not looking down, picking their way through the ice patches - they somehow manage just fine. I'm wearing my galoomphy Uggs, with treads on the bottom that could substitute for snow tires on a jeep, and I can barely keep it together.
Anyway, I had a great session - we got the studio with all the fantastic big equipment in it (there's only one, and we can't get it every time) - a fantastic pilates reformer, also the one they call the cadillac, and a couple of other smaller things, all with every kind of attachment and accessory imaginable. Katya is leaving Friday for a 3 week training session in London (she's certified by the London Pilates Studio), so I wanted to get in as many sessions as I could before she leaves - she'll be back on March 11, but I won't be back until March 16 (we leave on March 9, the day after National Women's Day - an official State holiday here!), so it will be an entire month till see her again. I left the building feeling 6 inches taller, like I could walk on a high wire without losing my balance, and so flexible that I could twist myself into a pretzel without thinking twice about it! It's a great feeling.
I made it back without any missteps or mishaps, and settled in for a nice afternoon of reading and blogging, waiting for Ed to get back from his day in Bila Tserkva. We're taking Anna, to dinner tonight at a really good Ukrainian restaurant called Kazak Mamai. She's the very smart and lovely young woman who is our first contact person at OSJI - she's in Kyiv from Budapest to help run the training session, and is then going to Kharkiv to see what's going on there for herself, and coming back on Thursday for the "official" opening of the office in Bila Tserkva, which will be attended by the press and by me! What a difference between launching this office and launching Kharkiv - all the agreements are in place, the Director has met with the police, the judges, the investigators and the prosecutors (there still has not been a meeting with the prosecutors in Kharkiv!), all on his own initiative. The office space is rented, equipped and staffed, and ready to take cases on Monday. So pretty soon they should start having results and data that can be used to evaluate the Project - it's effectiveness, cost, quality of representation - all the things that will have to be put together in order to convince the Ukrainian government that this is a worthwhile enterprise that should be state supported. We'll see.
I really do like living in this little apartment. I can sit at my desk looking out at the snow covered roofs of Kyiv, or curl up on the sofa or the eating nook-reading bed with Dr. Zhivago, or look out the very big window in the kitchen as I fix our homey little meals. It was so nice to come in from the icy streets this morning with Belle, sit down on our entry bench and wipe her little feet, hang my parka and scarf on our coat rack, and walk into the kitchen, fix my little breakfast (Nestle's Fitness, a pot of Fortnum & Mason's Earl Grey Tea, orange juice) and sit down at our cozy little table to eat it, after turning on the BBC Radio 4 Today Program on the computer, broadcast over my wireless speakers which sit on our drinks cart (it has wheels, so that with one swift movement the speakers either face the kitchen/dining or the living/bedroom/office area - it's brilliant!).
I walked up to Sofiyskiy for my pilates session with Katya at 1:30. I don't know how these Ukrainian women do it - it is so slippery outside, and instead of concrete sidewalks they have these ochre colored brick shaped tiles that are some sort of ceramic and are slippery as eels. I risk life and limb by choosing to walk in the cobble stoned streets (which give one's feet a little purchase), through slush and puddles and God only knows whatever else is under all the slush and black snow, to avoid those lethal tiles. Meanwhile the women here are wearing leather boots with skinny high heels and seem to have no problem at all. They are not looking down, picking their way through the ice patches - they somehow manage just fine. I'm wearing my galoomphy Uggs, with treads on the bottom that could substitute for snow tires on a jeep, and I can barely keep it together.
Anyway, I had a great session - we got the studio with all the fantastic big equipment in it (there's only one, and we can't get it every time) - a fantastic pilates reformer, also the one they call the cadillac, and a couple of other smaller things, all with every kind of attachment and accessory imaginable. Katya is leaving Friday for a 3 week training session in London (she's certified by the London Pilates Studio), so I wanted to get in as many sessions as I could before she leaves - she'll be back on March 11, but I won't be back until March 16 (we leave on March 9, the day after National Women's Day - an official State holiday here!), so it will be an entire month till see her again. I left the building feeling 6 inches taller, like I could walk on a high wire without losing my balance, and so flexible that I could twist myself into a pretzel without thinking twice about it! It's a great feeling.
I made it back without any missteps or mishaps, and settled in for a nice afternoon of reading and blogging, waiting for Ed to get back from his day in Bila Tserkva. We're taking Anna, to dinner tonight at a really good Ukrainian restaurant called Kazak Mamai. She's the very smart and lovely young woman who is our first contact person at OSJI - she's in Kyiv from Budapest to help run the training session, and is then going to Kharkiv to see what's going on there for herself, and coming back on Thursday for the "official" opening of the office in Bila Tserkva, which will be attended by the press and by me! What a difference between launching this office and launching Kharkiv - all the agreements are in place, the Director has met with the police, the judges, the investigators and the prosecutors (there still has not been a meeting with the prosecutors in Kharkiv!), all on his own initiative. The office space is rented, equipped and staffed, and ready to take cases on Monday. So pretty soon they should start having results and data that can be used to evaluate the Project - it's effectiveness, cost, quality of representation - all the things that will have to be put together in order to convince the Ukrainian government that this is a worthwhile enterprise that should be state supported. We'll see.
posted by Susan Spivak at 10:02 AM
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