Ukraine Adventure

Aug 2008 - Sept 2008

June 24, 2008

Time for another grand adventure.

My last big trip was Australia. I was planning to make big trips a semi-regular occurance. Well, life got in the way and I've been busy the past few years. But now it's time to see another little corner of the world.

The decission to go to Ukraine was pretty easy. Olga's from there and she wanted to visit her family. Plus, it was time for Ceilidh to see the other side of her family tree. And I get to tag along because they let me.

When we decided on taking the trip our eyes kinda filled with wanderlust. We were gonna go to the Black Sea, Moscow, St. Petersburg, throw parties to celebrate our engagement and visit all of her friends. Then we looked at the calendar and how much leave we've accumulated. It wasn't much since we both started new jobs less than a year ago.

So we decided to cut a few things off of the trip. Mostly it was the sight-seeing. St. Petersburg isn't gonna happen. Moscow will be one night. We aren't sure how many friends we'll be able to get up with and the engagement celebration is probably gonna be fairly low key.

We're focusing on family this trip. I think it's a good focus. I'm a little worried about the language barrier, because my Russian is elementry at best. But it's ok as long as Olga doens't hit me on the head and strand me in the middle of Siberia.

One side trip that Olga and I are both really looking forward to is the Arctic Circle where her grandmother lives. We're going to spend a few days chilling out up there. I know, take something warm. We hear that there are beautiful lakes up in that area, so we're thinking about taking our running gear up there to do a long run in preparation for this year's Marine Corps Marathon. I want to take my swim suite so I can say I've been swimming in the Arctic Circle (don't think scuba will happen up there).