I almost did a blog post over the weekend

Saturday night

I almost did a blog post over the weekend... really, I did. I always try to put one up over the weekend, definitely one or two a week, but it just never happened. I spent all day Saturday on guests and cooking for the annual school Thanksgiving dinner, which happened that evening. I was in charge of cooking the 8 kilo (16 pound) turkey Garry found to buy at the market on Thursday, plus a couple kilos of turkey breast... just in case it wasn't enough meat. I also made a couple sheet cakes, a salad and two big pans of stuffing, because Garry said it isn't Thanksgiving without stuffing... and then I opened a couple jars of pickles, just in case.

pumpkin pie

Luda at center with some of her girls

However, we had plenty of food since everyone brought potatoes and other side dishes and desserts too. I did forget the camera, so I had to steal a couple photos off of facebook. As you can see we even had flowers on the tables, which Garry made out of some sheets of chipboard and the desks. Everyone had fun, our two wet students were out for the weekend and made an apple pastry with Max's brother Artom at his house that looked beautiful but was black on the bottom. Everyone was saying it tasted wonderful and were laughing at the bottom (and not eating the black part.) Luda made pumpkin pie squares again this year.

The house insulation project continues here at home. They are still putting the insulation on. It tends to be noisy, there's lots of tapping, banging and drill noises.  Garry has finally brought enough home. Yesterday afternoon he managed to get eleven bundles into the van with three bags of glue and all the groceries I'd already bought while he was teaching English. He was going to buy six but the salesman said that if you bought ten you got one free. Garry says then it is the same price as it was before, because the price just went up 10%.


Gas prices have really went up in the last two years, so all of Ukraine seems to be going energy efficient if they have money to do so. Next the stucco will go on and then the color layer, I am guessing Victor will choose white, but we haven't asked yet.
Victor wants to keep some of the Mennonite charm of the house, so we plans to leave the corners of the house brick and maybe restore the shutters on the two front windows.

Monday morning it was so warm outside I wore just my sweater to walk down the street to teach English. This morning it was still warm when I walked down at eight am but it was raining lightly when I finished 50 minutes later.  Polo walked with me as always, he comes in and naps or helps teach English. The students think Polo knows more English than they do.

By midday the rain was coming down in earnest, and it was feeling much cooler out. Some people would say cold. Garry decided to drive Maria back to Zaporosia this afternoon, she was going to take the bus, but was happy to not stand in the rain this afternoon. Her 96 year old grandmother passed away last Thursday and so she's not staying overnight here like most teaching weeks so she can help out at home. Garry drives in and picks her up while I am teaching in the morning so they can teach from 9-11:30. Then we have lunch before the 1:30 bus comes through the village.

Garry wanted to get a piece of plastic pipe to fix his rain collecting system off the house roof so it falls in the cistern, (the original was broken by the insulation crew, I think) and buy more giant band-aids for his leg. Yesterday we had to change it three times, but he says it feels less weepy since I applied antibiotic cream the last couple times we changed it, so hopefully it will be all healed up before I leave for Canada in two weeks.

Even the doves look wet and cold