Cows, concrete, and driving... and the start of SEI 2016

The last few days have been busy. I could add breeding cows to that title, Friday at noon we had just arrived at the former Bellamy house Dnipro for the first team meeting for Summer English Institute when Garry's phone rang. He had a conversation in Russian with a lady who wanted her cow bred, he assured her that it would still work if he did it in the evening, and we would be home by nine pm. Which we were, after Garry sped home after the evening registration, but the car for Garry to follow to her house (she lives in another village, of course) was not there yet. Ten minutes later he was off to breed the cow, while I warmed up the extra pizza from the night before.

early birds

Of course we will be busy for the next three weeks teaching, leaving here at seven am and getting home at 3:30 (maybe) Here are a few pictures from last night's registration. We moved some stuff around between the noon meeting and the evening program. Registration started at 6:30 pm but some people were there at six! Now to get my lesson for Monday polished up... maybe, no definitely tomorrow.

Excited to see familiar faces... Don ald Sandy and friends

Lots more people arrived  by 6:45

Thursday morning I got a message that Victor would not be available to pick people up at the airport, could Garry go? Victor had been the victim of an attempted robbery and had been hit in the face, likely with something, perhaps a bat, he did not see it coming.  He has some hairline fractures in the bones of his upper cheek, he will have an operation on Monday (I think) to repair some of the damage. I walked down to the shop as Garry was busy pulling off the forms and setting them back up for the days concrete pour, because he did not have his phone on him. 

Finally a cement truck!

Neighborhood kid promoted from watching to helping

Max ended up supervising the afternoon's pour while Garry picked up the Hesters, he just left a little earlier than originally planned with the Tremaines, and picked up his new passport from the shipping company, on the way to the airport... then met with Stacy about the youth institute, and taught a class for a friend. He got home right after I got back from grouting the final bathroom, and the guys had just finished the concrete a half hour before... the one o'clock truck turned in the 4 pm truckload. By five, Max had to leave to sell milk for Victor, so his brother Artem and tractorist Sasha finished with a little help.

Friday they did another pour while we were gone, today they just set up for more on Monday, when we will be gone and the car 's A/C will finally hopefully be fixed. We got it back last Thursday when the Tremaines came and the mechanic had decided welding- after two tries- was not going to work so we got it back and just rolled down the windows for a week while they ordered the expensive part from Germany. 138 euros for the part, if we had lucked out and it had been the newer model of A/Cit would have been 30 - and in stock in Ukraine. It costs more than the previous two weeks of work on the car (they fixed a couple of other things while it was in).

Here's a couple of photos from this morning of the building progress. We don't know when the building team from the company will arrive yet, but they are hoping for next week, the wheat is ready to combine.