A Blizzard in March!

What's crazier than having a blizzard in late March?  Being STUCK in a blizzard in late March!  We were supposed to depart for our Spring Break vacation in Turkey today, but all flights from Kiev were cancelled.  Of course, we didn't act fast enough on getting on the next flights, so we spent countless hours searching online for airline tickets and calling the airline and hotel booking companies.  We slowly watched our vacation slip through our fingers.  We decided to take a trip outside to venture around our neighborhood this afternoon, and we thought the pictures would be blog-worthy.  It's definitely an unusual memory to capture with the camera!

A view from our apartment window.  This intersection is the nearest bus stop, but the public transportation system basically shut down today.

There were many people trying to get their cars shoveled out.  One man was even using a dustpan to remove the snow from his car and the surrounding area.  We tried to get a better picture of him, but he came across the street and yelled at us, so we snapped a picture of him from a little way down the street. 

The white corrugated metal doors are the entrances to a few local shops...obviously they are closed today!

The door ladies for our building were out really early this morning shoveling our entrance.  Drifts in some places were about up to Cassie's thighs or waist.

A view from our building's entryway.  The wind is brutal, so this shovel job, although very well done, doesn't look as good as it did this morning!

These will have a fun time getting out...  Some of them are double parked, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to move.

We were in shock of how much snow we got, so we spent a lot of time just staring out the window.  We got a bird's eye view of these men pushing a car out of the neighboring building's parking lot.

A tractor plow!  Unfortunately, the city does not have enough of these to efficiently remove the massive amounts of snow.  We aren't good judges of snowfall measurements, but we would guess that Kiev has seen at least a foot of snow (not counting the drifting), all in the course of about 24 hours.  And, to make it even better, there is a layer of ice under all of it!

Once we got back from our little adventure, Cassie resumed the task of calling the airline and hotel booking companies.  She was on the phone for quite a long time today, but thankfully we have a US-based phone and were calling 1-800 numbers, so we didn't have to pay for all those hours on the phone!

The cost of airline tickets from Kiev to Turkey went up significantly, so we decided it was not worth paying thousands of dollars to get there this week.  Lord willing, we may be able to have a "do-over" with our Spring Break and reschedule the trip for sometime in April.  For now, we don't see ourselves venturing too far from our apartment, so we've decided to make the best of it and have a "stay-cation!"