Bila Tserkva on Ice

Freezing rain caused everything to be covered by ice.

This evening as we headed home from English Club, we were met with an interesting phenomenon. Even though it was well below freezing outside, it was raining. The rain was immediately freezing on the ground causing an unusually slippery surface. I know this often happens in lots of other places, but being from the Central Coast of California, we've never seen anything like this.

We left English Club as a group, laughing and clinging to each other for support as we made our way to the bus. It probably would have been a bit more fun, had I not had our computer strapped to my back. We had to shuffle along to keep from slamming on to the ice as did all the people around us. Most people made good progress by just sliding across the ice as though they were ice skating.

Ira, a girl from our English Club, lives in a building close to ours so she walked, I mean slid, most of the way home with us. Normally this would be about a five minute walk, but it ended up taking us about twenty minutes. The fact that it was mostly downhill and we were laughing hysterically didn't do anything to expedite our trek home. I guess there's just something inherently funny about seeing women slipping, sliding, and falling in high heels on the ice.

As the three of us prepared to descend a particularly slippery slope, we had to wait (and laugh with) two girls who were struggling to climb the slight incline in their high heels. They would walk arm in arm for about five feet and then slide backwards to where they had started. They were being good sports and laughing too. What else can you do? Amazingly, each of us slid the twenty feet or so with out falling. The rest of the way home consisted of controlled slides of about ten to fifteen feet each. I think each of us went down at least once. Edna saved her fall until we were in sight of our building. She went flat on her back in a frozen pot hole. Thankfully it was dark and her pride remained intact with no one to see her squirming on the ice trying to stand up.

We eventually made it to our building with only our sides sore from laughing. It was definitely an interesting evening for us. There's never a dull moment in Bila Tserkva.