Weekend update

I (Teresa, in case you don't realize who writes this) have been in Canada for a couple days now. Garry went to Kiev with me on the train Tuesday so he could apply for a new passport at the Canadian embassy Wednesday after I flew out. He needs to get a new one before our trip we have booked in April to Sharm El Shiehk (Egypt, Red Sea) with our friends who went with us last year.

This was his second trip to Kiev by train to try to do it, because the first time it was a Friday, the day after he found out he needed a new one (it will expire less than three months before we go, he had planned to do it while we are in Canada in May for our son's wedding), and he wanted to get it done quickly because it said 20 working days to get the passport.

The embassy only does them Monday through Thursday mornings, which is why he had to go back.

Unfortunately, now he has to go back again because he has to do a long form application because his passport was lost or stolen two years ago (you may remember that he turned the entire house upside down looking for it while I was in Canada), and he had filled out a short form. He did go to see the Kiev farm show that morning before his train trip back to Dnepro; so it was not too boring waiting until 5 pm for the InterCity (fast) train. He plans to take the overnight train Monday evening and get his application in on Tuesday morning. Hopefully all will work out this time.

Sadly, when he got back  to the village there was bad news. Yana (our milker lady- now student work supervisor/herdsperson) needed to leave for her home village because her father was dying. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in the summer. She went on the bus Thursday morning and he passed away the next day. On Saturday Garry drove the van  with Max and a few other co-workers there for the funeral. Yana's mother also milked cows for us for a couple years until she retired at 52 about two years ago, so it was important to go support them.



I arrived in Winnipeg Wednesday evening; only a couple hours behind schedule. The plane from Germany was delayed about 50 minutes getting into Toronto so missed my flight and had to wait four more hours. Thursday morning I went on a mission, Garry needed his birth certificate verified and the lady in Kiev had said to just take it to Service Canada and they would send it to them. The Steinbach office could not do that, so I phoned the 800 number they gave me and Friday morning I was off to Winnipeg before 7 am. The Passport Office did photocopy it, but I have to phone them with a file number for them to send it to Kiev. I will do that Tuesday morning after Garry gets it when the application is in. I hope.

Saturday morning I drove over to Matt and Kari's for the reason I came home, I am spending a week with our granddaughters while they are away on a mission trip to Nepal. They left for the airport shortly after two am, with Seth driving them into Winnipeg very early Sunday morning. I have four girls and a schedule until next Sunday when her parents take over.

I was awake to say goodbye when they left anyway, it takes a couple days for my body not to wake up at 3 am because it's 11 am in Ukraine!

Demo continues

Today I went over to take more photos next door, the guys have nearly finished the demolition part of the project. They have hauled a lot of stuff out. The babushka's son will be back to pick up some things too.

In this photo you see a pile of what was a bunch on mud bricks from walls in front of the garage.



I even found some pottery things to add to my collection of old stuff.

One of the unique features of this old Mennonite house is a barn room. I am pretty sure the chickens lived here! There is even a spot to tie up your cow, Artom is holding up the chain.

 That is our young friend and tractor drive Vlad in the other other photo, he is taller than all the Rudei guys now! if you look by his leg you will see the hole for the chickens to go in and out of the house!

Here is the small high window in the barn room from the outside (opposite side from our house), there is one larger window in the room (light blue paint in photo). We'll have to figure out how to keep this window feature, (and weather proof it) when we turn this into a student bedroom. We will be replacing the windows in the house, as usual, but want to keep the trim and shutters outside. That chicken entrance will get blocked up, and we will need to pour a cement floor and drywall the walls!

Garry tells me the tree needs to go it is overhanging the roof and could become a problem. This back part of the house is in worse repair than some of the other walls.

 There is a trap door (that will be in the other small bedroom when we are done) that hides the stairs to a tidy little root cellar.

Right now there is a back door near the barn room, Garry plans to eliminate that and turn what was a toilet into a three piece bathroom.
Here is some photos of the back yard out that door. The toilet was purple, we'll buy a new white one.

Here are  the front rooms that will be the bedroom/ sitting rooms. Garry is deciding where the en-suite bath and closet and second spare bedroom will go.  The rest will be living/dining and be open to the kitchen. the wall between it and the kitchen came down this week.

This morning the girls made borscht, since it was Saturday and they get to sleep in on Saturday mornings while the new boys milk the cows since it is a non- school day. All I did was find things they wanted, normally I cook the big meal of the day. Garry likes having the three extra girls in the house, he says he will keep them until just before I return from Canada in March. 

Max and the four guys who came for lunch (since it was Saturday) liked the borscht. The girls ate theirs when they got home from afternoon milking, except Leila who was off, she ate with us and the boys. The girls said they would eat more when they get home from the Saturday night excursion to a youth church in Dnepro. Max volunteered to drive, so Garry got to stay home with me!

(Did I say I"m flying home next week to watch some of the granddaughters while their parents are on a mission trip? I am and hoping to see the new grandbaby when he or she is born!) 

Leila was excited to go over and clean after lunch. Last week they found a bunch of old plastic toys they took back here. 

A little snow fell this afternoon

Driving around some more

This week Garry had to go into Dnepro and pick up some acid and soap for cleaning the pipeline. They had completely run out of the soap chemical the day before and they don't want to get the parts the milk goes through on the way to the milk tank dirty as it can affect quality and taste.
Usually Victor picks it up and brings it out to the village but he is gone to Canada this month to visit with his grandkids... and their parents, of course.

I got to try to operate the GPS, as usual it was tricky, there were two streets with the same two word name, and the first one was in the wrong direction. Garry said there had to be a different one, and sure enough it got us close enough to find it. The difference- one was called an olitsha and the other was a different name for a road. Then we had to wait a while for someone to show up at their warehouse, since the office was elsewhere.

Luckily, Garry was starting to feel a bit better, although he is still coughing and once he starts he has trouble stopping.

In fact once a week they take the milking claws apart and the pipeline apart and clean all the elbows (corners)  by hand and check for any build up of milk stone (hard bits of remnants of milk that bind to the stainless steel if it is not cleaning properly). We think there is a problem with the way the water pushes through the system, not getting water everywhere as it should, perhaps a problem with the air injector, so they clean and check every week. They told Garry when we arrived with the containers (5 ten liter containers I think) that everything was so clean they should start doing it only every other week, but I don't think he agreed.



Tuesday evening we were off to Dneprapajisk- I mean Kamskoye- to meet with our normal Wednesday night SEI follow up class.



We had a bit of  Valentines theme and I had brought some small Valentine packs of popping candies from Canada that were the reward for answering questions.







Wednesday morning we filled both vans with students, plus Nelly and myself, with Max and Garry driving and headed to Zaporosia's farm show. A much faster trip than going to Kiev, and no train trip, although we may try going to the one there in June. It took a little longer than planned because the bridges were backed up, we think they were patching holes on one, so we turned around and drove to the other bridge.

We walked around for an hour or so and the students were excited to find some free gifts. They got some calendars, tea or coffee, balloons, and even a few candies. At 11:30 we collected everyone and headed back to the village. Max had to stop and buy some stuff so his group got home late.

Later Wednesday afternoon we were off to Dnepro because were we going to visit our friend Tonya's English class. It was new class we had not visited before, but we did see one familiar face, Catherine is now helping teach some classes, we met her as a student one of the first years we were in Ukraine. We had a good time talking and playing a guessing game. Since it was Valentines day, I gave the students some of the popping candies, and they gave us bags of cakes, cookies, and boxes of candies!










Thursday evening we were back to Zap for a free concert by a Christian band from Belarus. Since Max had to sell milk with the van we stuffed a couple students in his brother Artom's Lada, along with Artom, his brother Andrei and Vlad. Anton, along eight more students were in the back of our van while Nelly and I sat in front with Garry. It was drizzling a bit, but luckily it did not get slippery.


The students enjoyed the music and Nelly said that their testimonies were very good. Garry and I only saw the end of the concert because we had to run over to Steve and Jo's for a bit. They had a band that included a saxophone.

Demo has begun

We have a team (really two) coming to remodel the house next door at the end of March, and this week the guys started demo of the inside of the house. I have a few before and after photos.

The back of the old Mennonite house had a kitchen and a barn room.



















That barn room will get a lot of changes, however, we plan to keep the two front rooms as close as possible to original and keep as much of the wood floors as possible. It will be the private area and bedroom for the group home parents with an ensuite bathroom built next to the general house bathroom. Garry also plans to make two student bedrooms and a kitchen and a living/dining area.

The old heating, fireplace/furnace system was all knocked out along with the walls, so some of the walls of two front rooms we are keeping will need repairs/replacement where the chimney system was.

They also knocked down some interior walls where the big main room and bathrooms will be. Most other walls were built with mud bricks which you can see in some of the outdoor photos.

Garry plans to reuse the old doors so they saved the ones they took down with the frames.

On Saturday we had the whole crew in for soup at lunchtime.

We're better now

Garry had his cold/cough return, well, honestly it never really went away in the three weeks I've been back, with a vengeance. Sunday he was not well. Monday he was worse and spent most of the day in bed, although he made the cows' feed that morning. Tuesday and Wednesday he did not feel much better, and he finally went on antibiotics sometime in the middle of one night. We had a box around- you can buy amoxicillin tablets over the counter- and I am happy to say that today- Sunday he is feeling better than in weeks.

Thursday we went to our small group in Zaporosia and Friday we made it to our SEI followup Bible study.


 Saturday night we had student church meeting in the village. We played some games and ate cupcakes that I made and then Garry talked about community.

Stretching the mozzarella

This week in class Garry was working on balancing feed rations with the students and cheesemaking/ On Thursday (Garry is teaching in Victor's slot while he is in Canada) Garry made cream cheese and mozzarella with the students and on Friday he made Gouda with the help of our girls.


The grad girls have been living with us for a week now, they seem to enjoy it and Leila and Valentina are very helpful with cleaning. Alona has not been feeling as special although the other three are sharing the big green room. We hope to get them moved into their apartment this week.

Sunday we went to church in the village and for the second week in a row we had more students come to church than we had before. It was nice to see.