This morning was our SDA appointment. We met our facilitator just outside of our apartment and then we walked to the SDA. We are less than a mile away, but it was almost entirely uphill in the snow. And, Ukrainians walk very fast. It was exhausting!

The SDA appointment itself was a bit disappointing. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was hoping for more information.. I didn’t get the more information I wanted. Instead, we learned some information that may require some extra paperwork and delays. Or very possibly, it’s all fine and we’ll be back to things as usual tomorrow.

We had lunch with our facilitation team at a restaurant decorated like it’s a flash back to Soviet times. It was both cute and strange… very strange.

After we said goodbye to our facilitation team, I wanted to walk around and take some photos. It was snowing heavily, but our time in Kiev is limited.

This is the Maidan, Independence Square, where the revolution occurred in 2013/4.

This picture is taken at 180 degrees from the above one. The furthest building on the left is where our apartment is.

On the left, these tunnels that cross under major streets are very common. We used them frequently in Donetsk and in Moscow. On the right: I’ve made a hobby of reading signs in Ukrainian as we walk. Often, restaurant or store names are English words transliterated. This one, “каркас” or carcass, sounds less than appealing to this vegetarian.

We walked up the hill towards the churches. On the left, is St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery in the distance. On the right is St. Sophia’s cathedral. I wanted to head down to St. Sophia’s to see if the Christmas tree was still up– it was not. I’m guessing we just barely missed it, as you can see it’s base in the bottom middle of the picture– the red and gray blocks.

At this point, we headed back to our apartment. We’d done about five miles of walking and it was still snowing.

A ton of people were waiting for the trolleybus as we walked back– I couldn’t resist taking a picture.

Tomorrow, we should know if we’ll have any delays, or if we can pick Lyuda’s referral up in the evening. If we can, we will head to her region and see her on Wednesday. If we cannot, we will need to get some new papers sent from the US and I’m not sure how long that will take.