The weekend

We had a great weekend with Raisa. On Saturday we went to the "Privoz" market for a little retail therapy :) Privoz used to be a food only market, but now it's a huge complex with lots of stores and individual sellers where one can buy everything: you name it, they've got it. When I visited Privoz in December, I totally forgot about pick-pocketers and lost some small amount of grivna from my pockets :) This time I was very vigilant and made sure all my grivna stays where it belongs :) In addition to the clothes sellers we visited the meat, cheese, fish markets, etc. The food sellers always let you try everything they sell. When I was growing up, we would try everything - delicious cheese, smoked meat, farmers cheese, etc. We didn't need lunch afterwards :) Though this time I thought I'd better pass on trying unknown food!

After dinner I called my friend Tami, and we went to see the downtown area at night. It's absolutely beautiful! The New Year's and Christmas lights are still on, and there are lots of people on the streets enjoying the sights. Though I have to say that the alleys in the courtyard of Tami's apartment are absolutely dark and scary, but we were brave enough to go through both alleys with no problems :)

Today we went to the Opera Theater! One of my friends got us a couple of tickets for the children's musical "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". It was a great performance, and both Raya and I enjoyed it. It was obviously geared towards children, and the actors tried to make it as interactive as possible. Every time they asked the audience a question, Raisa along with other kids would enthusiastically yell "Da" or "Net". It was very cute. The theater was closed for several years for reconstruction, and just reopened last summer. It was gorgeous, when I visited it many years ago, but now it's breathtaking.

After performance we went out to dinner with my classmates. It was a ladies only night, and we enjoyed our evening at one of the restaurants in the "Afina" mall in downtown. Of course, Raisa was the center of attention, and she loved every minute of it!

I was able to borrow a USB cable at one of the photo stores (at no charge!), so I finally uploaded some pictures. This album doesn't have the latest pictures of the Opera Theater, but tomorrow after chasing the paperwork I'll try to borrow the cable again and upload the latest pictures.