Last Day

Our last trip to the Vodavoz, the water truck:

Standing in line

Filling the bottles from the truck

Only 5 bottles this time.
We usually get the honor of carrying 4 six litre bottles each...
across the parking lot and up to our fourth floor walk-up. 

We've about packed ourselves out. But not completely. We've still got all of those last minute items, like toothbrushes, deployed for use. We're still washing clothes- although mostly just items we've worn to Crossfit M4 or stuff for the plane.

Okay- maybe we need to pack our shoes
As per the custom, we kick them off by the door.
Hopefully, we won't forget them.

I went to the dentist earlier this week and had my teeth cleaned. Jason was afraid that I would get hepatitis, but I persisted, looking up Ukrainian dentistry online and discovering that Ukraine is one of those countries that has "dental tourism"- you can come here and get your root canal on the cheap. So, I stopped to speak to the woman handing out flyers on the corner. She took us to the office. We met the dentist, saw the equipment and room, and Jason's fears were abated. It was a pretty reasonable looking dental office- leaning chair, tubes, dental implements... They were prepared to clean my teeth right away, but I deferred until the next day.

The cleaning went fine. The dentist insisted upon doing it herself. Oh- and she thought Jason and I were brother and sister AND that we were Germans (all westerners look the same...). In any case, she sand-blasted my teeth with some kind of high pressure soda and salt mixture (my gums are still recuperating). I had to wear a hair net and safety goggles (really.) and was occasionally told to rinse and spit with something medicinal. Then, she put vaseline over my lips, which were pretty darn chapped by the end. She polished. I also got a strawberry flavored fluoride treatment- they turned on a tv in the room and let me watch music videos until it had finished (let's go with...) setting.

It cost more than we expected- 400 UAH (about 45 USD), maybe because I was also polished and fluoridated. Oh- and they gave me an aspirin to take at the end, so I'd have no pain afterwards and "wouldn't get sick".

When I wrote this, Jason was secreted behind this door for more stamping and signing.
I might've taken the photo on the sly...

I wrote a great deal of this note in the police station. Jason has been un-registering. It has required three trips to the cops, various stamps and signatures, a note from the school stating he was no longer teaching... yeah. It's bureaucracy like this that makes ours look efficient.

My favorite part was the woman in room 105 saying, "come with me." We walked into the hall. She went into an office that was busy, turned around and went back to her desk without a word of explanation, leaving Jason and I standing in the hall. She'd apparently used up her allotment of words for the day. So, we hung out in the hall for two hours. We weren't alone, though. There were stacks of others, leaning, propping, and generally cooling their heels, waiting for a sign of movement. An African guy came by and spoke to us in English. A couple of central asian students were surly in the corner. Ukrainians in all shapes and sizes lined both sides and sat in the window sills. They shuffled us out at 6 pm, when they were trying to close for the night. Basically, they told Jason to come back today. We think the stamping and signing may be at an end...

OMG! and Jason just reminded me- his $12 sunglasses broke! My $2 ac/dc shades are still going strong...