arrival

My flight from London to Kyiv was the first time I’d ever flown Wizzair…I think it’s Spanish, but I don’t really know…it’s a budget airline, which I most definitely needed…(getting from western Australia to Kyiv is NOT direct, to say the least, especially when you want to do it cheap as)…I flew from London’s Luton airport, which is easy to get to, but somewhat chaotic once you get there…the line for security took a lot longer than I expected…then I sat in the lounge for ages…they don’t give a gate number there until the plane is ready to be boarded…everyone just sits in the lounge, staring at the departures screen, waiting for the magic “go to gate ….. “ to appear next to their flight number…then you race to the gate, where a queue has formed…I stood in that queue for another while…then the gate agents checked our boarding passes, and we went outside, and stood for another while…we could see the plane, but apparently it wasn’t quite ready for boarding…it was frustrating to move, then stand around for so long, several times…eventually, we were able to board…it was just a cattle call, no assigned seats…I like the idea of first come first served, but it’s an annoying system when families insist on being together, which then means someone else has to move, which isn’t fair to that person…we finally took off, over an hour late…at least the flight was normal, people even clapped when we landed…I can’t remember the last time I’ve been on a plane when that has happened…ages ago I’m sure…

The late takeoff meant I arrived late into Kyiv’s Zhulyany airport…it’s the older of Kyiv’s two airports, which is obvious immediately upon landing…I don’t know when it was built, but it probably hasn’t been improved since…it’s not unusual to walk a little on a tarmac to get inside the airport, so that didn’t bother me…the first door we entered led us directly into the immigration room…3 booths were set up…and they really looked like booths…each booth had two sides, so theoretically there were 6 queues…howeva, one booth was for diplomats and crew, another for foreigners, and the third for Ukrainians…there seemed to be just one giant mass of people, instead of orderly queues…I’ve associated this sort of lack of queueing with india and china, I wasn’t expecting it in eastern Europe…not at all…I got into the mass headed for the foreigner booth…after shuffling forward for a while, I found myself near the front, and got ready to step up to the next available immigration agent…and then someone jumped queue and went straight in front of me!! Argh…I’d already watched this happen a few times, but was really frustrated to have it happen right in front of me…as far as I was concerned, we were all in a hurry to get through immigration, and out of the airport in general…argh…

I got through immigration without saying a word to the immigration agent…I noticed a piece of paper stuck to the wall with an arrow directing people toward baggage…which was where I had my second prehistoric airport experience…there were two sets of steel shelves and an empty room behind them with a large door leading outside…after a couple minutes, two guys drove with with a baggage cart on their truck…one guy got out of the truck, unhooked the baggage cart, the other drove the truck out, and then the first guy and another started lifting baggage off the cart…sometimes they put the baggage pieces on the shelves, sometimes on the floor…and sometimes straight into the arms of the old ladies who’d walked behind the shelves to direct the guys toward the exact baggage piece they wanted…again, there was no queue of any sort…nor any limitation on where you should or should not go…my pack finally came in the fourth load of baggage driven in…

After picking up my pack, I walked through customs, (there was no difference between nothing to declare and goods to declare) and through a door…I figured that door would take me into a room where people meet those picking them up…instead, it took me outside to where people meet those picking them up…what happens in winter when it’s cold as, and people don’t really want to wait outside? I suppose that’s the only choice! Almost immediately I spotted a sign with my name on it, written in English, thank goodness.  I already knew how to read my first name when it’s written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but I wouldn’t have known my last name…violetta gave me a big hug and said welcome to Kyiv…it turned out she’d been waiting for quite some time, wondering if I’d made it…she didn’t have any idea what I looked like, and she only knew that the flight was about an hour late in arrival…we got into a taxi, which started driving through town…after a few minutes, she realized I had no Ukrainian money…(the currency is called the grivna – I’m not sure how it’s spelled in English – abbreviated UAH in English)…she told the taxi to turn around, and take me back to the airport…I wasn’t thrilled about exchanging money in an airport, as I’ve always associated airport exchange counters with obscene rates…I’d check the exchange rate ahead of time, and was really surprised to see that the rates at this airport were plenty reasonable…woo hoo!! We got back in the taxi, took off again, this time to a supermarket…violetta told me I’d be staying in a short term flat until I found a flat to live in permanently…this short term flat had furniture, but no food, so I needed to get some of that…I ended up with bread, cheese, a few apples, milk, water (tap water isn’t drinkable here) and yogurt…not exactly a balanced diet, but I didn’t know how long I’d be in the flat, so I didn’t want to stock up…

Violetta also found a machine where I could buy a SIM card for my phone…I’d bought my phone in New Zealand a few years ago, knowing that I’d be able to use it in just about any country, as long as I bought a local SIM card…unlike US phones which don’t usually work well outside the US, this was a ‘quad band’ phone, so it works on any type of network…I’ve used it in New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia…SIM cards here are really cheap, only about $1.25…there are a few different networks, and of course it’s cheapest to stay within one network when calling or texting your friends…apparently a lot of people have several SIM cards/phones, with different networks…when you give out your phone number, you always tell people which network it’s with, so they know how to call you…

The taxi then took us to the short term flat, where someone was waiting for us…apparently that lady wasn’t thrilled at our arrival, she’d been waiting for quite a while…I felt bad, but knew it wasn’t my fault…I checked out what I could of the flat, and didn’t see any glaring problems…I gave her money for two nights of me staying there, then both violetta and she left…I set up the internet, checked email, and went to bed…

The flat was a two room flat…one living room/bedroom and a kitchen…(and a bathroom)…after living in a single room in Korea, this place seemed really nice…I’m guessing that having doors doesn’t mean much to most people reading this, but after not having them for so long, I was thrilled…my bed was a fold out couch, I found sheets and a comforter in the closet…

The next morning I was up pretty early, and just wasted time online until my boss (director of my school) called me and set up our meeting…she’d wanted to pick me up from the airport, but had a lot of other work to do…this was about the time I found out she’d been working crazy hours all summer, doing whateva it is you do when you’re setting up a new school…coordinating contractors, figuring out supplies to be ordered, hiring teachers and other staff, etc…and interviewing/accepting applications from parents/students…she told me which station was closest to the office of the school, and decided on a time…she’d already set up a couple appointments for me to go see potential flats…

Our meeting went well, though one of the appointments for visiting a flat was cancelled…the other one was good though, violetta came along to translate everything…at that point I knew I’d likely be living with another of the teachers at the school, the French teacher…she hadn’t arrived yet, but had given me authorization to look around and make the decision if needed…the first flat I saw was what Ukrainians call a two room flat…Americans would call it a one bedroom flat…a larger living room area, a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom…off the living room was a balcony, I’m assuming it is mostly to be used for laundry and such…if my flattie and I were to live there, one of us would essentially be using the living room as both a living room and a bedroom…after having that situation a couple times (while working for my first school) in Korea, I wasn’t thrilled about doing it again…I can deal with living in a small space, only one room…but when you have a flattie, I think it’s necessary to have a space that is communal…I think it’s necessary for each of us to have our own bedroom, a place where we can completely get away…I wanted both of us to be able to get away completely from anyone else…it was a nice flat though, and the price was great…

A few days later, after some mishaps with my phone and missing appointments I didn’t know about, I saw another flat…a three room flat (two bedroom) this time…I loved it, but I didn’t love the price…they wanted me to put some money down as a deposit, but I didn’t have that kind of money on me, and I wasn’t completely sure…in the end though, this was the flat in which we now live…it’s a 20 minute walk to the nearest subway station, which won’t be great in winter, but at the same time I like the forced exercise…the flat is in a massive residential area, filled with giant apartment blocks…it screams typical east European housing to me…it’s not the fanciest place, but compared to my housing in Korea, it’s a palace…I can’t wait to decorate somehow, and make it feel like home