Spring!!!

In the last few days things have turned absolutely beautiful here! The leaves are coming out and trees have the first flowers on them. The grass is growing and people have flowers in their yards. I'm enjoying every last minute of it!

With spring come certain changes to life in Ukraine. For those of us living in apartment buildings--the heat gets turned off. Mine has been turned off today, but it was turned of last week and then turned back on, so I'm hoping that they will turn it back on again! However, April 15 is the standard cut off day so...dress warm for inside and cool for outside. Thankfully, the weather has warmed up a lot, so much so that some people have already planted their potatoes. A couple of my office staff asked off to go and plant potatoes a couple of weeks ago and some of the others are planning on doing their planting over the Easter/May Day break (April 26-May 4).
The beginning of summer fashions are coming into view as well. Sadly. Summer fashions here are anything but modest. Right now it is mostly the shoes and short skirts that harken to summer. I see so many women limping around in new shoes which are obviously paining them. I always feel bad for them, they are so caught up in outward appearance that it is more important to wear stilettos that they can hardly walk in and that are obviously giving them blisters, than it is to buy something a little more sensible. It is possible to occasionally find sensible and stylish shoes here, but of course they are never on the "cutting ede" of fashion.
I guess to me it is silly because people have to walk so much here. You just try traipsing a mile or two in your stilettos and see how you feel! :P Naturally, I am not very stylish in my low heels or flats, but I am comfortable and I'm not limping!