A Night with the Saudi's

Hello all, just wanted to update with a story of the adventure we had this week. It turns out that one of my students is the son of the Saudi ambassador to Ukraine. On September 23rd the Saudi's have a national holiday celebrating the birth of their country. My student invited Cassie and I to the celebration at the President hotel, here in Kyiv. We accepted the invite and went down to the hotel.

Upon arrival, we had to turn in our invites and get in line. We could not see what was at the front of the line, but it there was a great deal of waiting. Finally, we came around a corner to see my student and his father dressed in the ceremonial garb of the Saudi royal family. Yes, I teach a prince...

We spent the night eating great food and rubbing elbows with the ambassadors of the Netherlands, Germany, Georgia, Russia, and many other foreign entities. It was a bit odd, but very fun.

Here are some pictures from the evening...


Cassie and I with the prince


Naif and his dad giving a speech in Arabic and Ukrainian ( I have no idea what was said)


Cassie and I

Borscht and Vodka Party

Last weekend, after I returned from camp (which was quite a pain), we went over to one of our friend's house for a Borscht and Vodka party. Basically, the receptionist from work volunteered to hang out with us for the day, drink vodka, and teach us how to make borscht.

A good time was had by all, Cassie and I left early as I had too much of a good time and was a bit tipsier than the rest of the participants...


Cassie and Adam (one of the secondary history teachers at KIS)

Many drinks in

Tomara (our receptionist) and Zac (9 year old teacher I worked with last year)

Apartment Issues

Hi, I am back with a bit of a funny story...

Last June we had a series of issues with our apartment. First our internet would not work, so we had to contact the internet provider who would only talk with the person whose name was on the title of the apartment. After a long series of phone calls our landlord got it figured out for us. But to get her to do anything we had to contact SASHA.

SASHA's name is all in capitals because that is how important the guy is. He is our "administrative assistant" at the school. Which basically means that if you need something done, you call him. Part of the reason why he gets things done is that he has "connections" both in the government (SASHA was one of the engineers who capped Chernobyl- for that he has been named a national hero in Ukraine) and with others in the waste management and import/export fields.

SASHA can be very heavy handed when dealing with others. He leaned very hard on our landlord and got her to help us out. The very next week we lost hot water and our washing machine broke. We contacted our landlord (who had pleaded with us to contact her first, before going to SASHA). She said she would replace the washing machine on Monday and install a water heater so we could take hot showers.

Monday came, no washer. We called her, she said Wednesday.

Wednesday came, no washer.

We did this for a week. Then I called SASHA. Within 24 hours we had a washing machine and the landlord promised that she would install a water heater over the summer so next year the rolling hot water outages would not effect us as much.

We got back from the States in July, no water heater. I mentioned it to SASHA then, but he was busy with getting the school together and told me to come see him the first week of school.

Yesterday, I went to see SASHA. He saw me and asked me if our landlord had contacted us. I told him no. His response was "what a lazy girl!"

He then grabbed his cell phone, dialed her number, placed the phone to my ear and told me to say "Hi, how are you? Where is my water heater?" I did so.

Then he grabbed the phone and said in Russian "I have the same question." Then he hung up. He said that the water heater should be in soon and walked away.

Low and behold, the landlord has called twice and is coming over on Monday to take some measurements. That is why I love SASHA.