Kremenchug

This afternoon we have walked almost a mile into city center of Kremenchug. It's prime industry is making large cargo trucks. There was a delightful garden with bronze figures from several childrens fairy tales... Including Pinnocchio and the dwarves with Snow White, as well as a crocodile from Ukrainian children's tale.

The weather is warm and sunny. About 25 other English speaking people have joined our group of 14 for these few hours. Our group is from Ohio, NC, Chicago...all people who knew Bruce Rigdon one way or another. We try to have at least one "lecture" a day about Orthodoxy (just our 14), but there are some optional activities that a few of us sign up for that make each day's schedule different.

The sounds are probably most different; Ukrainian and Russian are spoken most on the ship. Ukrainian is the official language of the country since 1991 independence and dissolution of the USSR. Yet some cities, like Odessa, still use Russian...and there are Russians traveling on the ship. Most of them are not interested in our touristy trips off ship, instead sunning in the 4th deck. We had a language lesson yesterday morning; 36 characters to the Cyrillic alphabet. It seems that half of them sound like s, sh, ch, sch, stch, or x. Town names, names of historical figures all seem to be a minimum of five syllables, and spelled differently every time I see them transcribed into English, making it difficult to be sure who is being spoken of. In addition, the Ukraine is positioned centrally, like Kansas, and also the bread basket of this area. And for at least 10 centuries, has been coveted and conquered from one side or the other: Polish from the west, Turkey from the south, Russia from the north, and the Mongols from the east having been the most destructive. And the geographic names change through the centuries.

Do you sense the confusion for us? A four part film has actually been very helpful to follow the development from around 900 A.D. Through the 21 years of independence for the Ukraine.

People look much the same, just more skirts for women, men always are carrying some sort of valued or tote bag and the shoes of men and women are terrific!

Food continues to be very good; soup and salad accompany entrees for every lunch and dinner, as well as desserts. Starched napkins are a table standard, folded beautifully in various shapes. There was a napkin folding lesson this morning, including a Cossack shoe, a rose, a carnation, a fan, a double candlestick, a pillow, etc.