This was Sophia’s first international trip. Sophia slept most of the time on the plain, and overall she handled jetleg and our hectic schedule very well. After a 5-year break we had a lot of catching up to do in Odessa and 10 days were clearly not enough: it was a lot of running around, meeting friends, relatives, walking, eating all the things we have not had in a long time and showing the city to Gabe .
Sophia is at an Italian restaurant near our apartment. 
Where is my food?
Showing Odessa to Gabe 
Gabe taking touristic photos
High school friend Max and his girlfriend stopped by our apartment and sang some songs.
Max is playing at our apartment
The coolest thing of all is that we were able to sneak Sophia in the real Opera. Even though it is against the rules of Opera house, the woman who sold us tickets told us to NOT speak Russian and pretend we are American tourists. This is what we did. Baris put Sophia in the carrier and walked in confidently and noone stopped him. We had the whole balcony for ourselves. Sophia enjoyed it a lot!
Odessa Opera House 
Sophia is enjoying the opera
We also took classic photo at the beautiful Odessa opera house.
Of course you can’t say you visited Odessa if you did not visit the famous farmers market “Privoz”.
Gabe rented an amazing apartment on Airbnb – right by the statue of Kateryna the Great. Of course we had to take advantage of it and I threw a party. Sopha met daughters of my 2 friends Julias:)
My high school and university girlfriends with their daughters
These days Sophia likes taking toys and objects from other kids. Of course the 3.5 years old don’t like it so they invented a game: an older girl was running with Sophia in her hand and 2 girls were running away from them.
To understand better Russian, Baris and Gabe were doing vodka shots.
We also had live music and some shoulder riding at the party
And forgot the most important – Sophia rode pony for the first time.
Sophia helped us to clean the apartment
We also met family and my favorite school teachers
All these experiences were exciting but exhausting and Sophia slept like a baby
Sophia 