what's happening?

Sorry I haven't been blogging this week, I am still totally out of whack on sleeping, and I have been trying to get back on schedule...rather unsuccessfully in the last week, I have been waking up every night around 2 or 3 am, whether I go to bed at nine pm or midnight) and can't fall asleep again until after 5 am, and then I sleep in late, some days. You get the idea.

 I have seen the second half of two Flyers games, some basketball and several history channel shows. The history channel programs are in English, the hockey channel is in Russian, although it is American or Canadian feeds for the NHL so the titles for stats are in English. One interesting thing I have found on this channel- several of the ads they are running to say the NHL is back feature clips of Bobby Clarke, one with him winking with the Stanley Cup, one with a quote from Bobby Orr written in Russian starts off with Clarke and the Broad Street Bullies and features a lot of hits and smashing glass. There is one which features only two voices in English and one is Gene Hart yelling "Bobby Clarke!" so I guess they still remember him from the old series against the Soviet Union team in the 70's.

Last Sunday we made it into church even with the snow (see previous post)- Garry was prepared for the drive- he wore jeans, had a hat, mitts, and a shovel and tow rope. After church we went to Lena's English class, the one that meets at a movie theatre, if you look close in the photo, you can see Garry's haircut he got before I arrived in Ukraine- if you saw him in Canada, he was not getting an expensive 14 dollar haircut, he was waiting until he was back in Ukraine!

Driving in Dnepropetroesk last week Sunday morning (Jan)

Garry telling the story of Jonah (and the big fish) 

Meanwhile Garry has had two more heifer calves- one last Tuesday evening while he was at his Bible study in Dnepro and one he pulled on Friday-- that's nine in a row for those of us keeping count. We now have 93 animals on the farm, its getting crowded out there. They are having trouble selling milk, the price is down in the market, mostly because people can't afford to buy it. Which means the people who buy our milk and sell it are not buying as much. Garry has dropped the price of milk to 3.7 grivna for a liter, so we can sell it. Normally we get the best price in the winter when there is less milk for sale, but not this year. One day we had to sell some to the milk truck that comes through the village.   Max has found a couple people in the village who normally sell their own milk in the market and are buying some from us because they don't have enough for their customers from their own cows. Interesting they want it warm, so the milkers have to put the milk for these people in cans in the morning while they are milking the cows so that their customers will think it is fresh when they go to sell it, if it comes out of the cooler (milk tank) it must be old, since it is warm when it comes out of the cow!

Driving on the highway this past Sunday morning (Feb3)

Driving this afternoon- Tuesday (the potholes are growing)

Last week's snow has became this week's mud, but the sun shone today so hopefully things will dry out so Polo can come in the house without leaving muddy footprints everywhere!