Moo-oosings by the Verhoog family: Busy week

The second year girls with me and their new Canada Mitts

Since we were teaching this week, it was busy as usual. We switched our teaching days a bit to make a trip to Kiev on Thursday to see the Farm Show there. Normally we teach Monday through Thursday, every other week in the morning with class for the second year students on Wednesday afternoon, all but one of them are going to Dnepro three afternoons a week to get a normal grade nine certificate. Garry sometimes drives them, but one of the group home dads has taken over most of the driving for this in the Mercedes van.

So we switched Thursday and Friday around for classes and left for the farm show in our van shortly after the alarm went off at three am, picking Max Rudei up as we left the village. That's right, no students, just our farm manager, so he and Garry could hunt down the stuff they were interested in without wondering where the students had gotten to (that trip will be for the show in February).

We didn't hit too many potholes driving in the dark and got to Kremachuk and went through the Mc Donalds drive-thru around 5:30 am. We could only get plain sausage (my favorite- I had one) or Fresh McMuffins. No eggs until 6 am when the lobby opens we were told, so Garry ordered three of those with chicken instead of sausage (he only ate so Max had the extra) - they have lettuce tomato cheese and lots of mayo for a real Ukrainian style treat. They had coffee and then Garry was driving again, although he had Max take over shortly before daylight. The drive went pretty well, in spite of the rain that started falling; only twice we heard a bang and felt the bump from a bad hole but we had no flat tires. We got into the outskirts of Kiev around 8:30 and parked the car near Mc Donalds and the Metro (subway) stop so we could miss some of the traffic.

We got on the subway in the correct direction, decided we needed to switch from the green to the blue line at the Golden Gate stop and counted stops before we crossed the river so we'd know where we had gotten on so we could find the car again! The subway goes over a bridge over the Dniper River so you see daylight then, car traffic is often backed up there, but the subway flies along.

We got out at the correct station and instead of walking like we do with the students, we got a taxi (Garry would be walking enough on his bad ankle). Turned out we should have brought the letters that came in the mail about the show, we had to pay 30 griven each to get in (about $1.30 US), but soon we were landyarded up and inside the (very) warm building. By the time we were halfway around the show we were carrying our coats with our brochure collection.

Garry wanted to find a few things there, and was pleased because by the time we'd walked all the booths he'd found pretty much everything he'd been looking for. He found info on drip irrigation, which he is considering for a small field near the irrigation pipe, some cheese making equipment from Israeli (we need to raise more money for that and it would have good to find more than one supplier, but there was one) and a corn planter monitor, which he really wants for next year, they had problems with unplanted rows this year.

Trying to find the field for irrigation on google earth

Watch for more photos from the farm show, I took some on my phone and I have misplaced it in the bedroom.

We had quite the time getting home, rain that was mixing with snow, there were big puddles everywhere on the road; making hard to see the holes in the darkness that fell by the time we were driving more than an hour it seemed... and then a flat tire.

While they were out fixing the tire, right on the road because it went flat on the causeway just before a bridge, they turned the motor off and the car wouldn't start. They had to inflate the tire and drive to find a better place to change it (turned out it had a nail in), after it rolled off the jack while they were trying to change it. Luckily Garry and I did not have to push the car far in the cold rain before it turned over for Max. Then while they changed the tire in a cafe parking lot, the engine started making a funny noise, it was a problem with the bearing on the pulley for the AC compressor I was told, the guys managed to bang the thing that caused the problem out from the spot that was making it rub on it. Garry said it was a good thing he put some tools in the car and I had my little flashlight in my purse.

The guys were getting wet and cold, so they pumped up the heat and it was slow driving with the rain but soon we were back to Kremachuk and going through the drive-thru again, they had hamburgers and I had a chocolate pudding orange flavored McPirogue (pie), they are seasonal and unbelievably tasty, if you can believe it. They fry the pies here, so its like when we were kids.. Unfortunately, we had more car trouble in the rain, about 20 minutes later the car engine died and the lights went black. Max pulled all the way off the road, and I hunted in my purse for the flashlight so they could try to get it going again. Turned out the ground cable had snapped on the battery. They pounded on the wire to get the plastic off, after Garry asked if I had a knife in my purse; I said maybe a plastic one from Mc Donalds and they actually used it to finish stripping the wire, they used the tools to remove a bolt and then re-bolt the wire to the frame. We were relieved when the car started up again. The guys were really wet and cold by the time they finished and and they really turned up the heat to warm up and dry out. Garry said every car that went past was hitting a pothole right were we had stopped and it had water in it.

We were even more relieved to make it home around ten pm. Max said he'd take the car in to get fixed in the morning and pick up Masha to translate for the morning classes (they took both vans, Artome brought her to the village. We had to drive the Mercedes when we left at three pm, Max was still in Zaporosia.

Friday morning we had classes and ate lunch with Masha, then Garry got everyone working in the afternoon before we had to take off for Dnepro for our English classes. We stopped in for Garry's favorite street food around 6 pm (sharuma) and ran into some black guys who were just finishing eating who spoke English. Nine times out of ten, they say they are studying in Dnepro, almost always medical school, but these guys said they were working... they were acrobats in the circus! They would have a performance Saturday at four pm, if we wanted to see them. When we went to the circus years ago with Seth and Jonah here we had seen an acrobat act called the Kenya Boys that we really liked, so Garry said we'd go.

Max Rudei, his wife Yulia and their little girl Vika went with us, and we had a fun time, I even snuck a couple of photos (they announce you can't but who understands Russian... Ukrainian... it's my story, and no, the usher ladies didn't catch me, so I didn't have it use it. We had some cotton candy, which Vika didn't trust, she didn't want to ride a camel or anything during intermission either.