THE EMBASSY:Going inside the American Embassy, where our orientation was held was as interesting as the orientation. It is surrounded by a 6 feet high, very decorative metal fence. One enters through a guard building, that resembles a pill box. All employees who check your identification. search you, put you through the metal detector and take your mobile phone, laptop, and other communication devices are non-Americans. I did not see an American until we entered the Embassy itself. Further security, we were walked in groups, ratio of 5-1 (Embassy employee) from the guard station to the Embassy front door. Once inside the Embassy, the ratio became 3-1. Being the oldest member of the group, I was the first to ask where the restroom was located. It was outside the conference room in which we were meeting and I was accompanied to the restroom door. I did see a couple of U.S. Marines. One of the career State Department employees explained to me that no Embassy had sufficient fire power on hand to keep armed interlopers at bay for too long. The plan is to continue to withdraw behind ever stronger doors and wait until the Ukrainian armed forces arrived with tanks, helicopters, mortars, etc. (Think Argo!)
MORE GOOD FOOD:
I took this photo after I had eaten most of the soup, it doesn't look nearly as good as it was. The eggs are from quail. The large white objects are delicious dumplings. The brown was delicious fish. All in all, this was really a good soup delivered by one of the lovely wait people at the Ibis Hotel. By the way, there was a blank where the wait person pictured name was supposed to appear. But I forgot to type it in. Her name is Marichka.
those dumplings look like matzo balls...
ReplyDelete