Quiet day in the village...

You may have heard that there were a number of explosions in the nearby city of Dnepropetroesk yesterday or an eastern Ukrainian city, since many of the foreign news readers were having trouble pronouncing the name of the city! You need to ignore the D and say Nee- pra- pet- trosk if you want to be close. We heard about it in the early afternoon when Victor phoned Garry (they happened between 11 and 1 in the downtown along Karl Marx Avenue) and checked the internet for more information. It seems that nearly 30 people were injured, when 4 devises went off in garbage cans, most of the ones in the city are small cement ones, and injuries were caused by broken glass and other flying debris. The first one went off at a tram stop as a tram approached, you can find information and photos, but not all in English, the KyivPost site is good for news in English if you are looking.


Meanwhile, here in the village Friday was a warm day, it was feeling rather quiet and drowsy as I hung out the laundry mid-afternoon, with the air heavily scented with all the blooming fruit trees and bushes in every yard. Garry and Maxim would call it hot, as they were sweating digging the rest of the trench for the water line.


Dnepropetroesk is a city with a population of more than a million people, and it is industrial, like most of the cities in this area, with steel plants, and a hazy look in the air as you drive there. In Soviet times was a closed city because of the famous "rocket factory" which produced missiles. Dnepropetroesk is sometimes spelled Dnipro in English because the river that divides the country and the city, the Dniper is usually spelled that way. All the explosions happend on the right bank of the river, although I have heard from friends in the city that rumours flew arround the city of other explosions.

The city was in the original running as a host city for the EuroCup soccer matches, but lost out to the city of  Kharcov(you don't really pronounce the K in that one.) Games will be played there and Donestk, Liev, and Kiev in Ukraine, with other games in Poland. One report said that we are close to Donestk, but they must have never driven from here to there,(we have) it takes about as long as driving to Kiev. No one is sure why someone would do this here, one would doubt terrorist activity as some reports say, but they are investigating.We'll be going into the city for church on Sunday morning as we do every week.