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.