Driving stories

This fridge magnet has a story to tell. Last week Wednesday we drove to Kamanskya (Formerly Dneprajisk) for our first meeting since our return for the SEI follow up group there. It was an interesting drive because we went by a different route than normal.
We had gone to Dnepro at 5 pm to meet with an English school which had asked me about teaching there, our friend Stacy taught there but she and Danil just moved to Canada in February. Since Garry is teaching for three hours on Saturdays, we figured I could teach for two since it looked to be a ways from where he teaches, maybe a half hour drive. So we were on a mission to find the school and figure out how I'd need to drive there on Saturday. The GPS took us there by a different route than I'd want to drive, however, it turned out it was in the  general area of our friend Lena's school, so it was easy to figure out how to drive there.


Then we told the GPS to find Dnepradzerjisk (the GPS is not up on the the new non-Soviet place names) and we followed its directions through a part of Dnepro we were not familiar with after buying some Royal cheeseburgers (quarter pounders with cheese) at a nearby drive-thru. At one point we might have turned back from the directions, but a small white car was fording the stream of water running down the road in front of us, so we continued on. We met a marschutka, which seemed to also say it was a major route out of the city. However, the road through the neighborhood was cobbled with a ditch through the center through which a stream was running with the melting snow in the area! Later we followed another car along a narrow paved road with lots of holes, and trees almost touching overhead. We were very relieved to eventually find a highway. It turned out the GPS had put us nearly to Kamanskya before getting on the highway!

We were there in time for our 6:30 class, afterwards Nikita asked to talk to Garry so we went to have coffee ( I had tea, I had a whole pot for less than their little cups of coffee cost) like every other time we are there. Then it was nine pm and we headed home, swerving around potholes all the way.

We took our normal route home, as we approached the beautiful five year old highway, there was a car with its flashers on at the beginning of the road. You see so many cars these days changing a tire. Unfortunately for this guy, like us the week before, he did not have everything he needed to change his tire.

He was standing there with his tire iron trying to wave down someone to help. Of course, Garry slowed down and rolled down my window to ask what was wrong. He pulled over and went to help with our new jack, it turned out our tire iron was the right size for the lugbolts to change the tire. He was from Poland and said lots of cars had driven by him in the last hour. He asked where Garry was from and he said he had a relative in Canada, in Edmonton, They were both speaking Russian of course. As Garry was going back to the car when they were finished a few minutes later, he told him to wait a minute, because he had a souvenir for him.  It was this fridge magnet from his hometown, now on our fridge in Nikoliapolia.