October 1, 2002

Another day of waiting and sightseeing! We took our time getting up in the morning, because we weren't expecting Inna and Vitali to arrive until about 11am. Our destination would be the Lavre monastery, the last place on our list of must-see places in Kiev.

Evan got up early (around 6:30am) and mommy gave him some breakfast while daddy slept in a bit.  A little later, he had a second breakfast and play time as usual. We put him down for a nap around 9:30, and he was up in time for an early lunch around 11am. (Kristin made some Ramen noodles for him)  Vitali and Inna arrived around 11:30am. Lee's cold was still around, but under control due to the medicine Inna had helped him buy the previous day. "ColdRex" really did the trick!

We arrived at the monastery and walked from the street down a sloping alley with a wall on one side and what looked like small shops on the other. At the end of the alley, there was a cross-roads with a large marble cross monument and some flowerbeds. This appeared to be the entrance to the monastery. Inna told us that the monastery was still in use, and roughly half of it was dedicated to men and half to women. Lavre, she said, was "like a small city", which seemed to mean that it was much like a campus at a University: largely self-contained, interacting with the surrounding community through well-defined means, and quite occupied with its own activities. Lavre is known as a place of spiritual healing, where people often bring their children (or just themselves) seeking help from divine sources. The caves (which house the tombs of many of the city's Orthodox saints) are thought to be especially sacred. We were told that originally, the monks would live in small cells in these caves along the riverbank.

We walked down another sloping road, this one less-traveled but more open, with a wrought-iron fence on the inside (facing the monastery grounds) and trees and a sleep hillside on the other. There were flowerbeds everywhere, and roses seemed to be the predominant species of flower. Hundreds of rose bushes, with red and pink blossoms. Above and behind us, the entrance was guarded by a tower with a gilded onion-shaped cupola on top. Below and to the left, the church and several buildings also sported towers with onion-shaped cupolas, all coated with gold leaf, shining in the sunlight.

We walked through the monastery grounds along small streets among many buildings. There were many people walking around: most of them seemed like visitors like us, but a few were clearly clerical: men in black robes with black hats shaped like rounded upside-down boats, also sporting grizzled beards. These men were often speaking with visitors, perhaps answering a question, perhaps sharing a message or thought, perhaps offering a blessing.

We came to a small, non-descript building with a normal-looking door. Vitali took Evan and stayed outside, and Inna, Lee, and Kristin went inside. Inna explained that photos were not allowed in the caves. Inside the building, there was a small room with some gift shop-like display cases and two doors: one very small one and one larger one. We bought candles to carry into the caves with us (there were no artificial lights), and followed Inna down the stairs behind the small door.

The caves were small, rounded stairways, carved out of the stone hillside and perhaps plastered afterwards. The passage was tall enough that neither Lee nor Kristin had any trouble walking upright, but narrow enough that Lee felt a few twinges of claustrophobia. (It was strange, knowing that the only light to be found here was the candles we were carrying.) We went down a winding passageway, and eventually came to the first tomb. Each tomb was a tiny alcove off of the main passageway: not much more than a shelf. Each tomb had a wooden casket with glass top, in which a wrapped body was preserved like a mummy. These bodies were all fairly short: only about four and a half feet long at most, and quite thin. The hands were uncovered on most, and they were brown and dessicated. On the wall beside each casket there was a sconce holding a candle (perhaps a votive?) illuminating a plaque on the wall containing a portrait of the saint and some words about their dives and deeds. Most had lived in the sixteenth century.

We passed each tomb, and came to a place where the passageway forked. Near this point, we saw an example of one of the cells where the monks would live during the monastery's cave-dwelling period.  There was a stone shelf for sleeping (quite small) and another for books or a candle.  One way was barred with a sign stating that it was for reflection and solemn worship of the saints only. Inna explained that only people who shared the orthodox faith were to go that way. We saw many people moving in and out of that area, but didn't have any idea what was there--perhaps a shrine? We continued, and soon came to the end of the passageway: a long sloping stairway upwards, where we came to a larger version of the entrance. We passed through the gift shop, and made our way back to the entrance that Vitali and Evan were waiting at.

We walked around a bit and ended up in a small plaza outside the monastery's church. This plaza was at the top of a buttressed wall, standing out from the side of the hill a bit. There was a great view of the lower buildings, the river, and the city of Kiev on the far side of the river. There were more gardens here, with roses and other types of flowers and vines. Again, there were priests here speaking with tour groups and individual visitors. We entered the church building, and it was much like the other churches we'd visited, but the sanctuary was much more pristine: colorfully decorated and dazzling with gold, and practically shining--it was so clean compared to everything else around it. We was out way back through the crush of people moving in to see the church, and--after Kristin took some time looking at souveniers in the gift shop--we returned to the plaza and began the walk back up the hill to the car.

We drove back to the apartment and Kristin, Evan, and I had lunch (Evan's second for the day!), then we put Evan down for his second nap of the day about 3pm.

At 3:30pm, Inna and Vitali arrived to take Kristin for a final shopping trip in Kiev. Kristin went back to the market near St. Andrew's and bought more painted eggs. She also stopped at a market and bought a few bottles of liquor as gifts for Larissa, Inna, and Vitali. When Kristin returned to the apartment around 5:30pm, Lee and Evan were playing together on the floor in the bedroom. Evan had gotten up from his nap about half an hour before, and was playing very nicely. he hadn't complained about not having dinner at all. But as soon as Kristin appeared, he began wailing for food, and wasn't satisfied until we'd heated up some soup and fed him most of the bowl.  Later, Julia arrived and we had a second dinner.  All told, today Evan set a record by having two breakfasts, two lunches, and two dinners.  We hadn't realized that we'd adopted a hobbit!

Evan was cranky much of the rest of the evening, and this wasn't helped by Inna and Larissa showing up around 7:30pm to give us all of our paperwork and documents from Ukraine to give to the U.S. embassies in Kiev and Warsaw (and to keep for ourselves). After he want to sleep, Kristin and Lee packed all of our bags in the dark (doing much of the packing in the kitchen where it was safe to turn a light on). We had to wake up the next day at 6:30pm, and didn't want to have to do any significant packing in the morning if we could help it.