Walking down the street

I have been walking down the street a lot in the last weeks and you never know what you will see. Lots of chickens and goats, kids and grown ups on bicycles are normal sights, along with the cows coming home in the evening, or going out to pasture in the morning. Yesterday evening I saw a wagon with a two horse team coming up the street toward me at a faster pace than normal. When they got closer I was thinking about how far off the street I wanted to be because the near horse seemed to me to be veering toward my side of the road and looked a little wild-eyed, so I was closer to the cement telephone poles than I normally am, and ready to move if necessary.

The first day for the village herd to go out was on a Sunday when the Steinbach team was here, and there was a heifer that fell off the dam into the pond when they were going over it, and Garry and few of the team helped some of the villagers pull her out after  one of them jumped in and got a rope around her head. Peter told me that his Bible reading that morning was very appropriate; Luke 14:5 about pulling your ox out of a pit on the Sabbath, and this morning he did devotions and told the BC team about it.

Today Peter, on his last work day was assembling cabinets (by five o'clock it seemed everyone was assembling cabinets as you can see) and finishing a few door adjustments, a couple of the pre-done doors had the locks on the wrong side, like the classroom and office doors which had been set so they would lock people in instead of out. The classroom door was locked to keep people from walking on it when the tile was finished. Tomorrow evening we plan to have student church there to christen the classroom. Hopefully the rooms will be ready to paint Saturday, if the drywall is dry enough to be ready for the final sanding.

That;s Victor (in white) and his nephew

Peter will be flying out Saturday afternoon, and Victor P left this evening for Dnepropetrovsk- a relative picked him up, so the team is a little smaller than before. I am sure they will get lots done tomorrow and I even have pizza left over for lunch tomorrow, since they did not eat as much as I expected. Garry and Jeremy were off to Zap for more stuff again tonight, they took a pizza to go.

Everyone else had a more relaxed evening, although they were home earlier than the last two nights.

Today... more work

 There were a few more windows to box in with drywall, so Richard was on that this morning when I brought down coffee. Peter was putting together cabinets on his last day of work, tomorrow afternoon he leaves for Manitoba (well Vienna, Sunday he gets to Steinbach.)

 Jeremy was busy installing the lighting he, Max  and Garry went to buy yesterday evening.

 The big job of the day was tiling the big classroom, with many hands on deck for that.

coffee anyone? 

 By lunchtime they were halfway across the room, but they are leaving the tiles you have to cut for another day... so its going fast. By three o'clock when I walked down to take photos they were nearly done.

Nikolai was putting in spacers

Leila likes to clean

Nickolai is back and Kristina was happy to see him

ice cream time

Sasha is not drinking and driving ... it's citrus flavored pop..
and he's just sitting on the tractor anyway!

Sunny day

The sun came out this morning and dried up all... well a lot of the road anyway, the land will take a few days. The guys were quite pleased with the dry, mostly sunny day. Once again they were getting a lot done, and I even got photos. This morning Garry had me set up coffee time on the front steps.

 As you can see tiling was being done in the other apartment today (#2) and the bathroom floor in the other (#1) was finished. They were even trying to install a shower, I still need to tile the walls in that bathroom.

Garry and his helpers got a lot of the ceiling hung today, he hoped to finish, but its close to being done, at 7 pm they were working in the storeroom.

 Jack laid laminate in the main room of the "annex" or apartment three, and by evening he and tractorist Sasha had done the floor for the bedroom in the front apartment.

Jeremy the speedy electrician

Hi Victor!

Peter hung the last door today, he's here for one more day of work
before flying home to Steinbach

Today's soup was made by Kolya at the boys' house, impressing Jack, who has know him since he was a small child in the orphanage, It was Ukrainiain chicken noodle with potatoes and carrot flecks, everyone agreed it was very tasty.

What do you see in the photo?
The lights are on! Still plugged into the extension cord from the neighbors, though.

Coffee anyone?

Wetter Wednesday

Peter finishing that last wall to build between the apartments

Yeah, last Wednesday was wet, but today it was wetter! It poured for a lot of the day, sometimes it was lighter, almost sprinkles, but it was very wet outside. I took the camera down when I brought morning coffee but not when I took lunch,  which good thing I got soaked right through my raincoat walking back to our house.

One bonus- we filled the cistern with rainwater running off the roof.

The road got a good cleaning, with puddles from one side of the road to the other!

Garry working on another ceiling

even the worms wanted out of the rain!

They continue to make huge strides in the work today. The tile is going down on the floors in a couple rooms with both Tim and Victor working laying tile,  more ceilings are going in, more drywall is being mudded (but it's not drying very fast in this weather), plus more electrical work and Peter finished building that final wall for the Steinbach team- must be why he had to stay the extra week.

The girls at the new house made soup today for lunch because the electricity was supposed to be off at our house today, and they have a working gas stove now.  There was supposed to be a crew working on power lines in the village, but they must not have wanted to work in the pouring rain, because it stayed on all day. Maybe tomorrow...

Jack's back!

In our last post, Garry ended up staying in Dnepropetrovsk from the time he dropped off the four people at the airport around one pm until Jack and the guys arrived at 8:30. He met up with Victor and they went shopping at Epi- Center and bought a pile of stuff, kitchen cabinets, sinks, toilets, electrical and more. He tells me that they were treated well, they even got free coffee and a 10% discount, shopping for lots of stuff at the end of the month is a good thing, apparently for everyone.

Peter and I stayed awake until they arrived, just barely on my part, they got here shortly before eleven pm, and unloaded all the suitcases from Victor's big blue van. After a little chatting and planning everyone went to bed, even Victor, who slept on the couch. Turns out we know a few of Jack's team, Richard was here two years ago, when they did the barn reno, and  he and his son-in-law Matthew was here in 2010 when Jack's team came to stay for a few days when they couldn't leave Ukraine because of the volcano in Iceland. Then there is Victor (not Dantsev), Tim and Jeremy.

By Tuesday morning we had discovered the other Victor, who lives in BC now but is from Dnepro and installed our first satellite dish, snores. Loudly, and he was in the big bedroom with three other guys. Tuesday evening he had the summer kitchen to himself, and everyone seemed happy this (Wednesday) morning. We also found out that the young guy Jeremy doesn't eat oatmeal or milk, so he ate dry cereal for breakfast. So far we have had breakfast at seven am instead of Jack's normal six, because they had another late night yesterday. Today there were muffins, but he still ate the cereal.

The window guys were back to do the sills

Jeremy working on electric

Matthew drywall finishing

Victor tile

Garry, Jack and Max started the classroom ceiling after lunch

Karina and the boys carried out the extra "gypsum cartoom"

Six hours later... one ceiling done

After a full day of work (they had lunch on site) they got back here for dinner after seven pm, ate and most of them jumped in the van with Max and Garry for a trip to Nova Leni and more supplies. They got there a little late and got to the checkout at closing and took a half hour to check out four carts of more building supplies.

By the time they were home Victor was settled in the summer kitchen for the night and Richard and Peter had gone to bed. I was almost there, it was about eleven pm and the four guys still had to shower before bed.