A typical day at our house- part 1

A typical day at our house -

Really this has changed the longer we are here, so let’s go back to the summer, when the sun rose early (before 5am) which was great for heading out to the bathroom in the summer kitchen before starting the day. Then Garry and the boys were big into demolition of walls and after summer institute was over, I was mostly into cooking, picking stuff out of the garden and laundry. The kitchen was in the summer kitchen, so it was easier to eat outside, and we bought a plastic table and chairs. We often had Victor and sometimes his sons or one of the guys from Morningstar working with Garry, so I cooked extra on the gas stove. I have not had a gas stove in 30 years, and only one burner really works well on it, (one only light halfway around) so cooking was challenging. We eat mostly chicken breast and hamburger that comes in North American style packaging at Metro- it’s like Costco. I even baked pies, biscuits, and cakes, with some success (there is no degree setting on the oven.) Victor had a washer here so it was easy to do laundry and the summer sun dried stuff on the line in a snap. I realized that the kitchen had mice so I put everything in plastic containers. In July and early in August the guys enjoyed swimming in the spring-fed pond in the village and we went to the Black Sea for a couple days at the end of the month.


As August came the carpenters started the wall building and cement making for the floors. Garry started digging the septic system. We lived with dust and noise. We ate outside unless it was dark (dinner could be at 8 pm outside) or raining. Garry would fire up the gas boiler in the summer kitchen so we would have hot water and the boys would wash the days’ dishes and we could get a shower before bed and walk back to the house and our bedrooms and turn on the fans if it was hot. We found out that thunder storms bring power outages that could last 24 or more hours. Then we’d have to cook all the meat in the fridge for dinner. One of the new plastic chairs was squashed under a fallen tree limb while we were indoors eating tacos (I found taco shells at Metro- imported so a little expensive but the boys love them, and we had all the fixings in the garden).


Garry spent the night in the hospital during the week we had no door on the other side of the house (there was a very secure quarter inch of plywood over the bottom of the door hole. It had broken during a wall demo and Victor ordered a new one which had to be made as the doors are really wide on an old Mennonite house. We also lived with flies and mosquitoes as the doors were left open while the guys were working even when we had two doors (granted the mosquitoes are nothing like Manitoba ones) He bribed his way back out when he was feeling better the next morning, because they wanted to confirm the diagnosis of food poisoning first (just a couple more days) Victor took him in that evening and went and bought about 20 us dollars worth of supplies so they could start an IV (they give you list of what they need- syringes and medicines and rubber gloves and needles and you go to the pharmacy and buy it before they treat you) He was sure he would catch something worse in the Infectious Disease hospital. So after donating to the cleaning lady (to buy cleaning supplies) and the doctor he came home to take it easy for a couple days, with a greater appreciation for NA health care and hospital food.


Then September came. Garry and I started Russian lessons with a teacher in the village (we started even- we knew a few words of Russian and he knows maybe a couple in English) We go twice a week for an hour and a half (after the first lessons we would stumble out with aching heads and the teacher would go out for a smoke, wondering why he said yes to Victor’s request to teach us, I think) We can now recognize some words, and almost say a few things so that people can understand us.


The boys began homeschooling lessons, one works on the computer program while the other does Biology, Jonah’s math, and Canada in View (our geography class is world geography so we are adding a little Canadian reading material) They are able to finish by lunch with science labs some afternoons. The boys get some exercise walking to the store to buy ice cream and treats. They biked until Seth’s bike disappeared from the yard in mid-October. They played soccer this summer with some of the neighbourhood boys (and often Garry) and now that the basketball hoop went up in October they shoot baskets if the weather is good, sometimes they have a game if the kids come around. One day they had nine players.