I must digress for just a moment to talk about the special drink that has become a staple of our diets in Ukraine. This drink is the mango kiefer spritzer, and it provides a great example of how things have worked for us here. At the end of our first 2-week trip to Ukraine, we stopped in Kyiv for one night before catching our plane. You would think that by this time, we would know how to go to the market, and we certainly thought we did. We walked in the freezing wind to the nearby market and managed to get home with what we thought were just the items we needed to survive for our brief stay. I must say, we were feeling pretty good about our accomplishment of navigating to (and through) the market experience on our own; we commented that we had been far more intimidated two weeks earlier... you know the drill... we had come a long way baby!
So, the shopping list had included just the few things we would need to get through dinner and the next morning's coffee before heading to the airport at 5am. Our list had included mango juice which we had come to love, as well as cream and bottled water (both for coffee). The next morning, as we tried to make said coffee ... the water turned out to be sparkling (here they call it "water with gas!") and yes, of course, the cream turned out to be drinkable yogurt! We had to laugh at our complete lack of competence in combination with our newly acquired confidence!
As with many of life's unexpected turns, this ended up being a great thing. We now LOVE to have mango yogurt spritzers for breakfast, and have pernamantly added kiefer and "water with gas" to our shopping lists! :o)
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