Busy days

Thursday afternoon Garry and I got back from Borispol, we stayed near the airport and drove home in the morning. The new students, Maria and the new group home parents returned from the sea the same day, (Garry had taken the others last week .photos on birds eye blog) I met them (and some of the returning students) when we returned from Bible study in Zap that evening. The parents and the new girls are living here (the girls are sleeping in the summer kitchen, where we had class last year) until the house is done, have I mentioned that?

Friday morning I was up before eight am and taking photos, so when Garry went down to the new house and I helped by finding good bricks out of the pile, since he was fixing the wall around the cistern that the cover had broken this spring when they were starting work on the house.

a short cut. maybe

 Garry got a phone call from Maria and we were off to a town on the other side of Dnepro because one of the new girls (Ira?) had to set up her pension money with the bank in the town she was born in,and today was the last day she could do it.. It seems her mother still lives there, but she gave her up, possibly due to her physical handicap, that's why she was in the orphanage.
We may have taken a wrong turn, we found the small city but drove down a dirt track beside a field for a while. There was a sign pointing that way for the place we were going however!

We found the bank. It was closed for lunch until two.

Lenin statues still standing in that city

 We got home by five for the staff meeting with Victor and all the group home parents at five pm, it had been rescheduled from one because we had to drive to do this bank thing today, and were gone from 11:30 until four, but everything worked out... except we have to go back on September fourth. The meeting went on until 7:30. Normally they are an hour. So it was a late supper (made by the girls, it had been sitting cooked on the stove since before we returned home, I ate mostly salad) and  fall into bed. Unfortunately, jet lag kept me awake until three am.

The table can fit a lot of people around

Saturday I was up at seven am and went shopping for tile for the backsplash in the group home with Garry in the morning, after dropping off Maria at home (Friday night's staff meeting ran late, so she stayed over) and stopping to drop a modem off to our missionary friends who lost internet during last weekend's storm. We drove back to the village and put it up after lunch and it looks great. Watch for photos on the other blog this week after it's grouted.

Garry really is excited about the corn crop

We were finished and back at the house after an ice cream break when Garry got a phone call from Maxim (who was in Zaporosia taking students for free medical check ups) saying that it was Sasha the tractorist's birthday and he'd like some time off so could Garry take over chopping? Of course. I continued making pizza for movie night, while Garry got dirty for the next four hours. He was very excited to run the chopper at two and a half kilometers an hour, watching the wagons fill up. The guys normally don't let him because they say he goes too fast and breaks things.

changing wagons

I messed up yesterday, I always forget that they talk hectares instead of acres. There are about 300 acres of corn and they will chop about 50 for silage. Seroseja, who is packing the pile with his payloader says that this year its solid instead of spongy feeling under his wheels. He says he thinks it is the one year in ten great crop year in Ukraine, when there is enough rain. The silage looks yellow and smells sweet too, since there is so much grain in it.

Driving the wagon back to the barns

Little Andre, who used to sell brewer's grain on Saturdays a few years ago,  is not so little anymore. He's six feet tall now and driving the tractor with the wagons back from the fields and dumping them into the pile. I took a photo of him while he and Max were changing a tire on the wagon on Friday.

I saved the last two pizzas- the spicy ones- and put them in the oven them at 8 pm, since I knew Garry wouldn't be home until dark. The new students had just arrived back about then, and were busy with popcorn and pizza and cookies as the movie was started. One bowl of popcorn had been snacked on by everyone who showed up early. I guess I should have brought two kilo bags of popcorn instead of one in the suitcases.

Garry showed up at dark and I turned off the oven because there was some people at the barn waiting for him to go breed their cows. Eventually he came in the house, was greeted excitedly by the students,  showered and ate his hot and spicy pizza. Then he came to bed while the movie played on in the next room. Next Saturday we hope to have the group home done and movie night can take place there.