Little jog around the neighborhood to to the forest shows us all we need to see. Trees made of flowers, flitting butterflies, singing birds, the tiniest forget-me-nots, grandmothers and babies. I don't know why everyone loves the fall season so much. Maybe they don't live in Kyiv.
Spring, man.
My iPhone photos went from this (taken on the outskirts of Kyiv)
To this:
This year I put "where can we go from Kyiv" into the cheap gotta-getaway generator and the arrow landed on the half-Greek half-Turkish island of Cyprus. The cheapest Europe I've ever been to–dinner for seven with wine for 60-100 euros?!–and they have really good coffee, orange trees, and gloriously blue sky. Hello Carrefour, how have you been? Wind and rain bent the palm trees sideways a couple of days, but on those days we laid around and read or painted rocks. What Cyprus doesn't have in warm weather in April it makes up for in chicken kabobs and the non-stop sound of the waves polishing rocks for you.
Easter decorations all around town, the birthplace rock of Aphrodite, the fourth most important mosque in Islam-dom and Orthodox church bells, many of the gods are on Cyprus, and they want you to wear crazy slippers so your feet don't freeze.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit we went to Starbucks (for the first time since we were home at Christmas,) and how happy we were to drink chai tea lattes and ice tea in a venti cup. Unesco World Heritage sites throw themselves at you as you try to dodge them while driving on the wrong side of the road going around a round-about the wrong way. Flamingos on a salt lake, clear water, lightning storms at night, a small easy airport, fresh tomatoes worth eating, a two hour flight from Kyiv and friendly people.
Tomorrow, back to the world of military convoys.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 