. We pay for cell phone service, satellite television, and the old internet (which we use in the classroom) at handy pay machines that you feed grivna into. Sometimes you have to put the bill in a couple times to get it to stay, and they charge a commission, but we can do it ourselves.They have become very popular in Ukraine over the last five years. Recently they even put one in the big store in the village. We used to have to go into Dnepropetroesk to use one at one of the malls in order to pay for things... the internet or satellite stopped working.
When we first came to Ukraine we would buy phone cards with codes on - you scratched them off to read the code- to put money on our phones, or give Victor money to pay for the internet and later the satellite, he would go to a bank and stand in line to pay it. It's slow to do business at the banks, which is why the machines have become very popular!
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| Amazingly this nasturtium has survived hot and dry September |
The car is finally back, Garry picked it up on Friday afternoon, before we went to Victor's 50th birthday party in Dnepro, and the English class in the city. They fixed a lot of stuff in it, but not the A/C of course. It has cooled off some, 15 days in September we were over 90 F.
We borrowed Max's van again to go to the class on Wednesday, but we mostly stayed in the village this week. Garry aggravated his sore feet walking back and forth to the new house and the new farm. They were working on drilling a new well for technical water (flushing and washing) during the winter months when there is is no water from the village. Watch for a blog post full of photos of the process.
It's the first week that class is at the barn classroom, instead of the summer kitchen and Garry remembered to tell me Thursday morning at 6:30 when we got up that I was teaching English at 8 am, because the computer class teacher is away. I quickly put a lesson together.
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| sunflower pile |
The rest of the sunflowers were combined this week, most of them were sold we were supposed to get paid for them on Friday, but no stack of cash yet. A couple tons were saved for the 150 kilos that some people get as part of their goods instead of cash payments for rent. The sunflower seeds were piled up in the shop so they can be collected by those people. The next morning the top of the pile had red spots... lady bugs were climbing up out of the pile.
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| sunflower seeds and ladybugs! |
We bought a new vacuum cleaner. When I got back to Ukraine, the old one (fie years old) was really loud, and was blowing fine dust out when I started it. Last week Garry decided to try to fix it and took it all apart, and decided the motor was going and so we finally got to go shopping for one when we had a few minutes before class Wednesday. When you buy an appliance in Ukraine you normally buy the one on the shelf and they go find the box it came it and box it back up. We needed to get an iron for the new house, so I was finding one on the shelf in a box and distracted Garry while he was watching the girl box it up. The guard taped the box shut before we left the store with our purchases. As we left she ran after us with the "guarantee" directions booklet.
The next morning I wanted to try it out before the afternoon staff meeting, since it had been a week since the carpet had been cleaned. That was when we realized that the hose that she had set aside when she went to put the vacuum in had not gone back into the box, so we couldn't assemble or use it. Garry picked it up Saturday afternoon, he took a side trip to Dneprapajisk when he had to go to Dnepropetrovsk with Maria and one of the students for a funeral. He took the vacuum cleaner in the box with the receipt just in case they didn't remember the English speaking people, he showed it to the guard who sent him back to the salespeople by the vacuums and they found the hose. It works too. He was so pleased he bought a blow dryer for the girls in the new house.
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