They're here

We got home from Spain Tuesday afternoon at two pm and as we went out the airport customs doors in Kiev I spotted Scott and Shannon Crawford waiting for us in the lobby. They had landed about a half hour before we came with the Harder family. Welcome to Ukraine!

They had two carts full of luggage - all their bags had arrived - which they pushed as the eight of us went outside to find the van which Garry had parked in the long term parking lot. There was snow outside, it was cold compared to Spain, but not Saskatchewan, although Shannon was still wearing flip flops she'd selected for comfort on the planes from Canada.

The ride back to the village took longer than usual because as we got further into the trip, pretty much the middle 200 kilometers or more,  there was more snow on the roadsides and some snow and ice on the road (and dark- the sun had set shortly after four pm and it was the holiest section of the highways), so it was slow going to McDonalds in Kremachuk and from there until we got to Kamaskoya (Dnepropajisk ) where the roads got better. We even saw a van that had went off the road and struck a tree in someone's yard.
There was no snow in Zaporosia where we dropped off Jo and Steve and the boys. We were in the village around ten pm (no snow either) and unloaded the essentials and the Crawfords slept at our house that night.

Garry was off breeding cows already at 6:30 am Wednesday morning, and discovered that the reason he is getting so many phone calls to breed cows lately. The local vet is prostiglanding cows (giving them needles to bring them in heat) and giving people Garry's phone number. The cough he started in Spain has gotten worse since we got back, so he's not been out making feed in the mornings. That and the fact he's been taking meds for it means he's feeling pretty bad.

Wednesday around noon, we took the Crawfords shopping in Dnepro for a mattress and essential house goods so they could sleep in their new house that night. Victor took them and their purchases home in the blue van because we needed to be in Kamaskoya for our SEI follow up class there at 6:30. We had a big group out there and Garry managed to do an exercise with them from our last class we attended in Spain about values and goals. We were sorry that we had to leave after going to the Monday classes as the speaker continued on Tuesday and Wednesday after we flew out and he was very interesting.

Thursday was a slower day, although we had our first staff meeting with Scott and Shannon attending at one pm.


 Afterwards, Garry and Scott and went to see the new irrigation reel and gun that Max had gone to pick up that morning. Scott also got a bit of tour of the village.


We also went to the village store, I needed four and sugar to make cake because we were celebrating Sasha Borchuk's birthday that evening at six pm. A week late since we were in Spain last Wednesday. I think he told me he is 26 now, he told the Crawfords his name was Sonya, which is another of his nicknames. They got to meet most of the students at the party at our house, some of them introduced themselves in English, making Nellie proud. We had baked potatoes and kielbasa sandwiches before the cake and ice cream.