Finished!

Today we finished teaching English for a while... until September when we start doing follow-up classes in Dnepro. This year we will be doing a Bible study in English again.


 On Thursday we finally got back the village. The new radiator was finally put in and we picked up the van late Wednesday afternoon. We had already rented the apartment for Wednesday night because we were supposed to be going on a boat tour on the river with some of the students, so we stayed one more night.




We went out to see some sights with three of the students after class Wednesday, they (well, the brother) drove us to see the new yacht club. As you can see in the photos, a storm rolled into the city. The wind blew like crazy.

They took us closer to where the boat trip would be- this year we were going to take a ride on the "pirate ship". We walked along the embankment for a while but ended up escaping the rain as it started falling by going to a nearby cafe for coffee and tea, and talked for a long time. We discovered that the sister remembered Garry speaking to her English class when she was small, soon after we came to Ukraine. Both of us had our phones turned off, and it turned out people had been trying to phone us. Victor to say the van was ready, and the boat trip had been cancelled because the rain and thunder and lightning continued for a couple hours.

When we drove home Thursday, Garry found lots of stuff that needed fixing, and was excited to find out it was so wet you couldn't walk in the garden or fields. We may not be buying much more water, Garry says the corn is about three weeks from turning into corn silage. There will be some for grain, but it is really wet today.

Teaching English- Canada Day

 

This week we were busy teaching English again. There were many exciting things included this week. I was extra busy at the beginning of the week as Garry and I planned the special assembly for Canada Day.

Every year we have a Canada Day and students are asked to dress in red and or white to celebrate and the teachers hand out pencils and bracelets and other goodies in class.


This year for assembly my theme was A Taste of Canada and Monday night I was busy rolling out sugar cookies and cutting out more than 100 maple leaves and baking them, while Garry and the girls were making food for dinner around me because there was a thunderstorm brewing and Garry thought we might lose power again.

I had Canadian candies and  potato chips that I had brought in my suitcase and everyone got to try something, there was a costume contest and we sang O Canada, of course. Some students are wondering who would put vinegar on potato chips ( I can't understand why crab is popular here, so...) Next week some of the students are in charge of Ukrainian Day for equal time.

On Thursday night it was the annual SEI party at the Word of Life church, this year they had a super hero theme. A number of students came and we played some games and had some food and the pastor had a short message.









Then on Saturday morning we drove in from the village for the annual picnic, fortunately the predicted rain and thunderstorms did not arrive; it had rained most of the day Friday with a similar forecast. However we hung out with past and present students that came and ate a lot of food, with only a few drops falling around 10:30 am.

Luckily we had arranged to stay in the city for a couple days because the van broke down as we got to the apartment Garry had rented for three nights- water was pouring out (rad or a hose). We are hoping to get it fixed Monday. Meanwhile we are walking a lot and enjoying a few rides to places. Tomorrow  morning its back to our last week of English teaching.

Garry is hoping for less rain this week, it rained quite a lot this past week or two. Now he's wanting to get the hay baled and is worried about getting mold in the sunflowers! It looks like we will filled the old hay mow after all. Second cut was only half normal but it looks like a lot of bales to make now. Max cut some on Saturday so hopefully it gets dry and baled without getting rained on.

Wedding day

While we were teaching English, Victor took Alyona and Nikolai to get married and it did happen, with a only few minor hitches along the way. Victor used our big van, we picked him up on the way into Dnepro to teach and he dropped us off, hoping to be back by two o'clock when we finish teaching, with the bride and groom along to take photos in their "costumes" as everyone calls them and celebrate with a cake with the other teachers.

When he got to Zaporosia, he found out they had an appointment for three o'clock, which we did not know. Luckily, he worked his magic and convinced them to move it up to just after noon if there was a cancellation, considering the bride would be getting tired since they had arrived at ten am. He said the lady even game them a small ceremony, instead of just signing the official paperwork. She told Victor that they do many more divorces than marriages these days.



Victor had convinced them to wait to put on the dress and all for the photos... unfortunately, he discovered a new problem on the way home to the village after the ceremony, when the van got stuck in third gear.

Eventually, Victor drove the old Mercedes into the city, while Garry and I hung out with Clay, fellow teacher, after classes were over until he arrived. We ended up driving the old Mercedes the rest of the week for classes.

 City photos were off with the van out of commission (the transmission was completely rebuilt I think, it came home Saturday afternoon) so we picked up a small cake on the way out of town and ended up having cake and melon with the happy couple and several other students when we got home.

Around 7:30 pm Alyona got into the dress, complete with the veil and Oksana's white boots and Nikolai put on a fancy suit someone had lent him and we did a farm wedding photos session. I even picked three roses from our bush and pulled the thorns off them for her (there were four out there but that would be bad luck, even numbers of flowers are for funerals). 

 Since Nikolai is one of our corn field guards we took some of his guard hut in the field - including carrying her over the threshold.

By the time we were done, Alyona was tired of photo taking, so it's just as well we didn't go all the way into the city to do it, they are unique! On Saturday afternoon I printed a bunch off and put them in an album so they have one just like Oksana and Kolya.

Finally online... and an exciting day

This week our internet has not worked all week, while we have been spending most of our days in Dnepro teaching English and so I can finally post this story I wrote six days ago. We are in the city overnight so we can do some prep work for classes with wifi, the internet company is sending out a specialist to fix it.

The internet has not been working in the village since last Saturday night. I should have done a blogpost about the rain that fell that afternoon before I went to bed, because Sunday morning we had no internet when we woke up, and it still is not working Monday evening as I type this up to post later. It is unusual to not have internet so long in the village these days, we have gotten used to having fast, good internet.

We had a thunderstorm with a good rain mid-afternoon Saturday, shortly after Garry told me he thought the storm was heading elsewhere. The guys had to come in from baling straw in the field- and they were in the farthest field from the barns, so they were all stuffed in the cab of the tractor, Leila with them. 

She was pretty wet when she came into the house to clean up. It didn’t last long, but Garry said the rain got down about half an inch into the soil, and it didn’t even rain three miles away because they were still combining when he drove past around five pm with the students to go to the Just Youth event in Zaporosia.

Garry and I started teaching English today (Monday) in Dnepro for the EFCCM Summer English Institute. Since we woke up early we went into the city early and caught up with the world on the internet on the free Wi-Fi at Mc Donalds while eating breakfast. Garry even had a snickers Mc Flurry for dessert!

Sunday we went to church in the village. We brought the projector and Garry’s new computer so we could play praise songs again. We have not done this since Garry’s computer was stolen in the spring because we lost all the Russian and Ukrainian praise songs on it. Saturday I downloaded a bunch of new ones and even found some of the church’s favorites from before. Unfortunately we discovered that Garry’s new computer did not have the same ports as the projector just as we were getting ready to play the songs!

Garry was glad it was not Monday morning that we found out that we had this problem since he is using the projector to play videos from his computer for English class. Even better, when we went into Zaporosia Sunday afternoon to buy groceries and wedding rings for Nikolai and Alyona we were able to find an adapter to make it work for class.

On our way back into the village Garry had to stop the van. A little girl, maybe two years old (she looked less) was running down the middle of the street. Her four or five year old sister (the friendly little girl last year’s team will remember) was riding her bike nearby and sprang into action, throwing her bike down and running into the rod to carry her away, she even waved and yelled Garry’s name in greeting as she dragged her away.  Some neighbors were watching and shook their heads, but we  soon slowly passed by another little girl who looked like she might be three years old, all by herself, waving a stick on the edge of the road… you have to keep your eyes open when driving through the village.

The wedding- signing the paperwork- is tomorrow (Tuesday) in Zaporosia and since we are teaching, Victor will take them in to get officially married. After that they will change into their “costumes” as the girls call them and Victor will bring them to Dnepro and we will take some photos by fountains and things and take them for dinner. Alyona can just squeeze into Oksana’s wedding dress and I found Nikolai an old jacket and tie, new dress shirt. I hemmed up some “new” used jeans today for him; they were about four inches too long, and Kolya’s suit was too big for him. Read the next post for details of how it went and photos.

I have my classes ready to teach Tuesday morning, Garry is just finishing up working on his. We got home around four and took a nap before he went out to see how the baling was going. The straw was dry yesterday afternoon.

He was gone a while and came back with a story. As we were coming into the village Monday afternoon, we were puzzling over piles of burnt straw near the church. Some of it was on the road and still smoldering. It looked like the big farmer was combining and delivering wagons of loose straw.  People sometimes burn excess straw after they carry their straw into the yard and store it, but I had never seen it burning on the road.

Garry told me we had missed all the excitement in the village while we we teaching. When he went outside some of our students  came running up to him, telling him all about it. Apparently, the guys had piled the straw bales a little higher than normal on the wagon (8 rows instead of 7 high) that Anton was driving back to the village and the bales hit the power lines as he drove under them at the corner by the church. The bales caught fire and were exploding as the burned and the strings would pop. Anton climbed off the tractor and tried to throw off the burning bales. Soon the wagon and tractor tires, surrounded by burning straw, were burning too.

Some people in the village saw what was happening and phoned Maxim so he came back from the corn field where he was working to help. By the time he arrived, Anton had driven to the shop with the idea of blowing the fire out with the air gun, luckily he did not find it Max says, so he then decided to drive the tractor into the swampy slough land near the ponds and was almost stuck there, with everything still burning. Max drove the tractor slowly out of the slough and slowly about a kilometer to the irrigated corn field where he used the hose to put the fires out.

Amazingly the tractor tires seem OK, they are made of thick stuff and they just re-inflated them afterwards. All’s well that ends well, and everyone who saw it had an exciting story to tell. Apparently, someone even has some video of the burning bales.

So we lost one load of bales that burnt up, and Max traded a second load of bales to someone in the village to fix a problem, because the  burning wagon broke the line that gets power to the street lights. Luckily it didn’t break the 480 high voltage) line that it hit to set the bales on fire. From now on, wagons will only be loaded seven high with bales, too.

Visitors and students and sunflowers and...

We continue to work on getting ready to teach English starting Monday and continuing for three weeks (we will leave the house at 7 am and return around 4 pm), actually tomorrow is staff meeting, set up and class choosing evening, so we'll be gone from noon until after nine pm this Friday. The girls will be on their own for lunches. That's one of the English words that they have mastered and they like it when I cook whether its vegetable soup or a big meal with massa (meat).


Of course, life on the farm with the staff and students goes on... the wheat harvest continues they have been filling big semis to sell it graded better than feed wheat this year and 15% moisture so not bad.  Starting on Tuesday they have been baling straw with two balers (They planted someone's sunflowers this spring in exchange for baling now). One baler is taking care of the commitments for  traditional rental agreements
(they get 150 or so bales of straw, among other things, unless they chose cash rent) the other is making bales that are being stacked under the straw shed. 

Interestingly the guy combining the wheat, told Max that the sunflower field near the barn is the best he's ever seen. Garry thinks it could be taller. but that field got lots of manure on it, so that might be why it looks so good. 
Here's a picture of Milka the cow next to that field yesterday evening. Milka was the pet heifer/cow at the "new House" but last year when Garry tried putting her in with the herd she did not do well with others (she got beat up) so Yana bought her for herself and stakes her out everyday.

Leila is excited because she is working with the guys stacking bales and so she gets paid extra like them, so she is going to pay off her used smart phone she bought from Garry fast. That means she is not cleaning house as much as usual. Normally she's washing the kitchen floor at least once a day and insists putting dishes in the dishwasher as soon as you set your cup down. Garry keeps having to get a new mug for his coffee in the morning.

Garry made snacks in the sandwich maker to go with cherry pie

We are getting used to having girls in the house, being group home parents  supervisors (our new term). Its been about a year since three moved in, for a while it was just Alona and then the grad girls moved in back in February and stayed because Garry likes having them here so much. Leila and Valentina are always helpful when it comes to cleaning, and Vika has learned more English. All the girls helped pit cherries for the freezer.

 Even though we are occasionally hunting for something that has been "put away," or having to buy a new liquid soap bottle for the bathroom (I have not figured out who tosses them, I'd had one and refilled it for six years before this March) it certainly makes for lots of contact with the students. I've even learned some new words. However, we also use way more water for showering, and the girls still don't lock the door when they are in the only bathroom in the house, even though Garry thought he solved that problem by install a hook and eye fastener. That must be why the real group homes have two bathrooms, or because its hard to get in when you need to sometimes. We do have the outhouse anyway, as the visiting Canadian teams know!

Alona will be moving out next week, after the wedding, they can get married Tuesday at the government wedding palace, and then it should be quieter too. She tends to disagree with the other girls and it can get loud at times. She and Nikolai have been fixing up the apartment that they will live in.



Yesterday Garry and Max had visitors from Odessa who had someone give them ten cows (I did not get if this was a Christian project or not) and they were pasturing them on half and acre this summer and had bought 20 round bales for the winter. I don't know if they convinced them that this was not going to work well.

Today we had some Americans out who were visiting Kirvoy Rog along with some people from the project that sometimes sends us students. Misha Mazhara (Kolya and Vasa's brother) was one of those students and he was along for ride- he left us last summer to go to trade school. Garry toured them around the farm and then took off for Dnepro to try to get a broken hydraulic hose fixed. He should be home before we need to leave for small group in Zaporosia where we'll meet the three guys who have come to help Steve and Jo with their outreach this summer.

I will wait to publish this post, as I have a few photos to add from my phone and Garry has it. Yesterday he took his phone in the morning when he made feed (often he leaves it here)  and it must have fallen out off his shorts pocket. He bought a new phone about a month ago while I was gone, it's bigger and better than his old smart phone (he sold it to Leila) that he had for a whole year without losing or breaking it.

Unfortunately he only saw his phone lying on the pavement after he had driven over it with the skid-steer. Victor is taking it to  a repair place today to see if they can revive it.

Crop photos- report after the rain

Not our sunflowers, behind the village sign

The rain came just in time for the sunflowers, the leaves have really spread out and the flowers were just starting to bloom.

The corn is growing well, since it has been getting water all along. The irrigation is shut down except for putting fertilizer on this week. Garry said if they had known it would not work as well as last year they would have put more fertilizer on when they planted the corn.




The problem is lower water pressure in the line this year. Garry thinks more people are using irrigation water this year.

  Valera was putting on fertilizer and cleaning the filters on Monday when we stopped to check the cornfield.

The guys are a little disappointed in the wheat harvest. There is more grain than other years, but the spent more money on fertilizer and inputs this year than other years. Likely the fertilizer did not make much difference with the lack of rain for the last two months. Max has talked to some other farmers and they are getting less.

They are combining again today the first stuff last week was a little wetter than they thought, so they moved it to the opposite side of the shed. They started baling straw again on Monday.