the rest of the week

Well here it's Sunday again and we were back at the church in the village after a busy week. This week there were more of our students and staff at the church with us, including Maria, who translated the sermon for us.

Most of the students were back there

The rest of the week was melting snow, teaching, driving and flat tires, it seemed. I took this photo of the geese down the street enjoying the puddles on Wednesday when we have afternoon classes for the second year students, the geese are not out of their yard at eight am when I walk down to teach my first year classes.

A good amount of snow had melted by Saturday morning, with it raining steadily Thursday morning. My coat got wet walking to class and back.

Garry drove to class at nine am with Maria and on Wednesday morning the bridge of boards was built to keep everyone's feet dry while crossing the ditch. I watched Garry walk carefully across it that afternoon but I wore my rubber boots all week and just walked through the water, it looked a little precarious!

Thursday after the staff meeting, the first one since we returned since the trip to Kiev was the previous Thursday (check out the other blog for photos, I finally got some to post) we headed to Zaporosia and bought a couple hundred pounds of potatoes, cabbage and carrots for the guys house to stretch their household food budget. Garry had bought them some before he left for Canada in December, but they had run out and some of the guys were complaining to Garry about the lack of variety.

We then did a little grocery shopping, went through the drive thru and got some dinner on our way to our usual English Bible study evening meeting. We left around 8:30 pm for the village, and I remarked that we would be home much earlier than the week before. The road was wet with the melting snow, and with the spring thaw, the number of potholes are growing in the highway.

Or we should have been home earlier. The rear passenger tire went flat about halfway back to Nikolipolia, so Garry pulled off to fix it. No air pump in the car (we have one for these emergencies), so the spare tire had to be dug out of the back under the bags of produce. He found the jack, but not the handle, so he had to use the cross to turn the jack. It turned harder than it should and then it did not go up far enough to get the tire off. Someone had broken it while we were gone, it seemed. He gave up and phoned Max. Max had driven to Kherson because his father was sick and needed to go to the hospital, so he couldn't rescue us (and he had borrowed the air pump.) He made some calls and during the next what seemed like an hour, Garry tried the jack again (it didn't work again), we stargazed and watched dozens of trucks and cars go past us. Finally, tractorist Sasha and Max's little brother Artom pulled up in Sasha's little hatchback with a big jack and changed the tire. We got home after ten pm. Garry went to bed, I had a skype call with our daughter and grumpy granddaughter.

Friday morning Garry dropped the big bags of vegetables at the "boys house" and went to the little tire shop across the highway (it's only open mornings) to get the flat tire fixed. It had a small nail hole, so maybe it wasn't hitting a pothole with all those vegetables weighing down the back that had left us on the side of the road with a jack someone had broken and put back into the car while we were in Canada. Amazing, Garry had a second tire go flat as he pulled off the highway at the tire place. The front tire on the other side, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it.

We left for the city early, Garry was teaching an English class at four and then we had our SEI followup class at seven pm.  First we stopped to buy a new bigger and better jack for the car, and a few things for Maria, who has moved out of the house and into the little house - the old summer kitchen- broom, dustpan, and some blinds. Then we stopped to see the travel agent about booking our trip in April.

We were going to check on buying mattresses for when the team comes- we need two new ones after a couple of ours ended up finding homes in the apartments last fall. However, Garry needed to find the new place where his lessons was the school moved while we were gone, a few blocks away from where he had been teaching. He'd been there once in December, and thought he knew where it was... but we drove around for half and hour before we found it, with 5 minutes to spare.

We had a surprise at 7 o'clock at Patona, there was a cake with our names on and all the familiar faces to share it with. We talked about our friend Sandy and how Don was doing now and how they all felt her loss and what she meant to them after meeting her for and having her teach the last two summers in Dnepro. "Sandy was a queen, always dignified."

inside the show, out of the rain

Saturday morning Garry helped with the 5 am milking  and then we were going to stop at the travel agent to make a cash deposit and show my passport for our April trip. We said we'd be there at 11 am, since we were going to visit our friend Lena's English school at one before Garry's lessons.

However, we ended up behind schedule when the nothing wrong with it front tire was flat again. First we drove over to our shop to try putting air in, but Garry couldn't find the compressor so he changed it.

Then we drove across the highway to see if the tire shop was open on Saturdays. It was sort of slushing on the windshield at this point, the rain that had started mid-morning was changing to snow.  It was open,  so the old guy there tried fixing the tire again, he said it has a little dent in the rim, which may be the problem, but he took it off and cleaned it and re-inflated it and back on the car it went.

at the tire fixing place

Then we were off to Dnepro, where we did everything he'd planned. I was feeling sick with a sinus headache by mid afternoon, so I holed up in the car while Garry did his other classes.

at Lena's English school

It was clear and dark by the time he drove home. Second night in a row without a flat tire. However, when we got home the yard was white again from the snow that had fallen earlier in the afternoon.