Snow, love and catching up

Sledding in Zaporosia park on Sunday

Everything is back to normal... well almost. We seem to be getting over jet lag. Still getting up in the middle of the night sometimes. The snow has melted a bit in the last two days. Garry has been getting around, trying to get everything back on track. He may have overdone it a bit on Monday and Tuesday morning, he has been helping with milking to get everyone working faster. When he is there it takes an hour to milk, it had been taking two hours to milk 70 cows with 3-5 people in the parlor. We were close to or over our electric allotment last month, so making the vacuum pump run for half the time will help with reducing that bill.


Garry is a little upset, it seems all his unused breeding charts and the one that he was using when he left (and where Max wrote any cows he had bred in the last two months) have disappeared. He thinks that the students shredded them and used them as tinder for starting the woodstove over there in the milkhouse, along with some of the milk filters, since Victor had to buy more unexpectedly when there was suddenly none left a couple weeks ago.

On Monday Garry had Max go buy train tickets for the annual student trip to Kiev for the farm show. He had a plan were the first year students would go one day and the second year students the next (and the two of us would stay there overnight) but the only day there were tickets available for the overnight train was Wednesday, so everyone was going together and returning on Thursday night's train.

view from the 9th floor

Tuesday morning, Valentines Day, Garry went off for morning milking, and one of the cows was stuck behind a freestall, so he helped push her out and hurt his foot a bit, so he took a nap after breakfast, and told Max to return our two tickets because he was not up to all the walking after all. His foot was sore and looking rather more swollen Tuesday at noon (I am happy to report after taking it a little easier for the rest of the week it's not as swollen).

 I had brought him a card and box of chocolates from Canada, but he had decided to book a hotel room in Zaporosia for my Valentine's present. We woke up from our nap around noon (I was still not sleeping much at night) and drove to the city. Mc Donalds has finally finished their renovation and has reopened, so we got Mc Nuggets and village fries (think wedges) going thorough the new two lane drive-thru and checked in at the INTourist Hotel.

It started snowing in the afternoon, so traffic was a little snarled when we went out for dinner at 5 pm. All our favorite restaurants wanted a reservation, so we went to the mall for chicken sandwiches and salad, followed by so Lviv chocolates before heading back to the hotel.

Breakfast buffet at the hotel

We drove home around 11 am to make sure everyone was organized for their trip to the city. The highway was mostly just wet, (with a few more holes than the fall) except for the one section where the two lanes collapse into one just before the village because it was never cleared well after the big snow they had (it's on a curve and it tends to drift there.)

The road into the village has a set of tracks with bare pavement, it can be a little tricky getting in and out onto the highway. When you meet someone you have one sides' tires in some deeper snow.
The street thorough the village was not plowed and is icy under the bumpy snow. Hopefully the whole mess will melt next week when it is supposed to warm up above freezing.

Since we did not go off the Kiev with the students, Maria, Max, his brother and one group home family, we invited the four grad students and the two other students who did not want to go on the trip and were working on the farms for afternoon pizza before went to our Thursday night English Bible study. Garry has promised to take them to the show in Zap next month if they want to come.

The other students and supervisors got home Friday morning, it seemed like they had a good time and did not have any major mishaps.  One guy missed getting on the Metro (subway) car with the rest, but he successfully caught the next train and found the group.

 We had a couple student romances that changed partners while we were gone, but it seems the broken hearts are recovering. One couple has been dating for 18 months, rumor is they want to get married this summer.

Nina, the first year girl with the short hair, decided to leave this week, she had planned to leave Thursday but decided to stay for the trip apparently. If he'd know on Monday that she was leaving, Garry would have told Max not to buy her a ticket and saved the 500 grivna. She had trouble adjusting from the start, disliked the work, and was having more problems trying to get the guys to do her work for her the longer she was here, I think. While we were in Canada she came into some money and took off to Kiev for a week until it was gone. Not the first time a student has done it, and likely not the last.