Teaching week

The first three mornings this week I left the house at 7:40 for the 15 minute walk to school for the first English class of the day (this week's big success- "Excuse me!" 'cuse me...) Roosters crowing, chickens running about between yards and main street, dogs barking at Polo, who always walks with me, the village kids walking to school, all of us dodging the fresh cow piles in the road and in the grass beside it. The cows still go out at 7 am but with time changing they go home at 3:30, so I can see them up the street when I head out for my afternoon class. (Check the trade school blog for a little video of English class, click on the bird photo.)

There they go! at 3:40

 By the time we head home at five it is getting quite dark.

The weather remained dry, with varied levels of mist and smoke in the air, fall leaves are being gathered and burnt along with other debris. It seems this time of year the air always smells like smoke, especially evenings, sometimes it even creeps into the house in spite of everything being closed up with the colder weather. My children will realize how much this bothers me, who used to walk around the house searching for fires if I smelled a whiff of smoke.

Last night visibility was very poor when we drove home from Dnepropetroesk after the English club meeting, due to a combination of low-lying fog and smoke. It seemed denser the closer we got to home. It is very humid out this week. Once again there is rain in next week's forecast, Garry even covered the straw pile over at the "new barn" today. I'll believe when I see it!

 Some mornings are quite frosty. In fact, we have had to turn the gas heat on in our house for a couple weeks. A few days this week it was quite cool in the house, poor Maria was wearing her coat over a big wool sweater inside the house some days. We are looking into finding some kind of blown in insulation for the walls.

Thursday morning we switched classes around a bit, I wanted to see a repeat of a television program I'd missed Wednesday night when we went to the boys' house to make brownies...  Garry and Maria mostly played ping pong with some of the students while I made brownies. Maria is translating the recipe for the boys, Nikolai helped me stir the batter and he wants to make them again. I left the pan there for them to use... I plan to get a new one. Last night we bought them a nice plastic bowl to mix things in as I was unimpressed with the bowl they gave me to use.

Here comes Masha in her Canadian boots Bonnie gave her

Garry got a ride right to class from the guy he bred the cow for

 I went first instead of last Thursday afternoon as Garry was off to breed a cow in another village, someone picked him up, in between we had two Americans who were teaching English for two weeks in the city for YFC, along with the Ukrainian family running the program, between 11 am and 2 pm, for lunch and a bit of a tour. It was crazy busy by the time we were off to the Bible study, we were ready to sit down and relax.

I left  the classroom at three o'clock, first I meet Maria walking to class and then saw Garry arriving by car. Our van was off with Max Rudei, who was visiting tax and gas offices in Zaporosia. They arrived home at five pm, Max had gotten back in the village with the van. Garry commented on how difficult it was to keep them interested in class as it was getting dark outside, he must appreciate me more now.


 We hoped to take a young street kid (19) that our friends have been feeding off and on for the last year home to the village to join the program. Maria and Garry interviewed him and he agreed to come, but he didn't show up for his ride Friday morning when Garry came back for him.

Friday afternoon Garry finally got his concrete poured for the foundation of the addition he's working on for the first girls' house. He plans to pour the floor next week. They used the rest of the load of cement here in front of the barn. It tends to turn into a mess of mud spring, fall and any other time it rains. It seems like we will be continuing to milk the cows over here in shifts this winter, since we have not been able to find anyone to come install the milking equipment, now that we finally have electricity at the "new barn".


 The container of stuff shipped from BC has been sitting in import no man's land in Kiev for two and a half months after sitting in Poland (I think) for weeks of other red tape... nothing happens quickly in Ukraine.