New Year's Evening and bringing in the year 2009!

This was a first for the Rundstrom clan… in all of our years over here we haven’t gone to the city center to welcome in the New Year (this is where the best display of fireworks go off and where tons of people gather to celebrate, similar to going to the park to watch the 4th of July fireworks in the States). This year, since we live in the center and our kids are grown, we decided to go and join in the festivities. We took the subway and found thousands of folks gathered. They were all decked out in their warm jackets, Santa hats, and ready for the New Year party to begin. We listened to the free concert and watched everyone around us dancing and hanging out with their friends. The Mayor of Kiev and the President of Ukraine wished everyone a wonderful new year and other things as well, but, we didn’t understand as it was all in Ukranian. Then…the magical moment, Midnight! The fireworks were impressive and lasted about 15 minutes. Corks were flying through the air as well. After about half an hour, we decided that we were frozen and ready to go home…we headed towards the Metro entrance, we were literally squeezed down the stairs…it was a bit scary, wondering if we would loose each other. We decided that the metro would be too crowded, so we walked to another station about 15 minutes away. It was not too crowded and we got home without any troubles.
We continue to see fireworks tonight as we are home…and probably will continue to for the next few days.
Hope you enjoyed your New Year’s celebration and that 2009 will be a good one for you!
Our love to you…
~kim for us all

This video is minutes before midnight 1 January, 2009. I wanted to try to give you a glimpse of our New Year's Eve experience. We were among thousands of Kiev-ites gathered to welcome in the new year at Independence Square.
below are more pictures of the evening...