Packed and ready to fly

Saturday afternoon we take the train to Kiev, where we will get a bus over to the airport - it takes less than an hour at night to get to Borispol, the train arrives at 11 pm, and we fly out at 2:40 am. It is supposed to be 25 C in Sharm El Sheik on Sunday.

Garry tells me that school was cancelled for the kids in the village again this week because of the extreme cold weather. However the teachers, like Maxim's girlfriend Yulia still have to go to school. There are still a number kids walking down the street to the store, visit friends or go sledding. Sleds with metal runners are very popular- in the city parents use them to pull small children along the icy sidewalks and sidestreets. Very few sidewalks are cleared of snow in Ukraine, so the sidewalks are icy until the ice melts in the spring. It may be several weeks before we can walk without slipping. CNN is talking about predictions of extreme cold hitting Ukraine again in this morning's newscast- I hope we are on the plane to Egypt before it happens!

Of course even when its cold life goes on in Ukraine as you can see in these photos I took on Saturday afternoon of the art market in Zaporosia.















I have been packing the suitcases while Garry has been trying to get the water running out in the barn to the cows this morning, he had some problems, Max must have lent out the the 1/2 inch socket set and he needed to replace a frost plug in on of the water bowls before he could turn the water on. Max got back around 2 pm and went out to give him a hand.

Garry popped in for his wallet, he needs some supplies, the car has already been in and out the drive several times already. He says three frost plugs were busted in the waterbowls, and he figured out why- apparently while he was gone yesterday afternoon someone cleaned out the heifer pens and had the doors to the barn open for a couple hours! Opps it is minus 16 C out right now, and it wasn't warmer yesterday.






Well the kittens can jump on the windowsill to eat the food with the other cats so they are set while we are away, I am putting out a big bowl of water, and I am sure Max will give them some milk in their dish too, since Box has pretty much weaned them, they are so big now. They will miss sitting in my lap "helping" me crochet, they are getting better at not attacking the yarn.

Now I just need to make Friday night dinner pizza and make sure I remembered everything I want to bring for two weeks, the snorkeling fins take up some space, so we have one large and one medium suitcase to bring on the train- less than went we flew home in December, in case we have to drag everything up three flights of stairs and out to a bus.