One day while driving to Zaporosia we saw a truck and we had to get a photo for our Steinbach Manitoba friends.
The van is for driving bigger groups of people or if what we are transporting doesn't fit in the car, like on Wednesday last week when we drove into Dnepro in the evening to pick up the milk jugs so Max could sell milk on Victor's route on Thursday.
Garry also drove the van one Tuesday after the village school asked on Monday if he could drive some students and teachers to a program in Zaporosia. It turned out to be a dance competition. He said some small girls were belly dancing and some older kids performed hip hop. The most interesting part of his morning was how they found the school. The teachers were unsure of the address of the school it was at, so they had him drive across the city and follow a certain martshutka (van) around on its route, which actually led him back to the correct school building near where they came into the city!
Friday night we drove the car to Dnepro for our English group study, and a few errands. On the way home around 9:30 pm we got stopped at the police block post because one of our headlights was not working. We had been told that if you tapped it, it would come back on, and it did. In Ukraine you get five minutes to fix it before they write a ticket.
We were trying to hurry home because Nellie had called around 8:30 to say we had surprise visitors, the two guys who went on walkabout in the fall had showed up to collect Sasha's ID he'd left without. They were sitting at the table with Nellie and our girls when we got home. We rapidly found the stuff they came for and they walked off at ten pm into the night to find a way into Zaporosia. They said they had train tickets for the morning, back towards Kiev where they had found work.
Instead of relying on that grace to get the headlight working, since we stayed home all weekend, Garry and Max tore it apart and fixed it. Well the car was home all weekend except when Garry went and bred cows in nearby villages. Or when he drove over to the farm.
Last week Garry was teaching the students a new milking protocol that includes pre and post milking teat dipping with a disinfectant.
We are in the middle of a calving streak, Saturday morning he got a call to help deliver a calf at 5:30 am and there were three born in about an hour. We don't remember having three born in one day in Ukraine, so a record breaking day. All three fresh heifers (first time they gave birth) calved safely with two heifer (female) calves and one bull calf. He sold quickly when someone arrived that day to buy one born earlier last week, they bought both bulls. It seems they sell better this time of year. Yana says it's because once they are finished drinking milk the grass is growing. We keep all the heifer or female calves so they can grow into milk cows in about two years.
We walked to church Sunday morning, temperatures were around freezing but all the snow has melted now. Nellie was back on Friday morning so we had translation again. Last Sunday we sang the hymns and followed along with the Bible verses, but the sermons in the village are in Ukrainian, so our limited Russian doesn't help much.
It was the birthday of one of the ladies that attends the village church. Sunday afternoon she had a bunch of the students at her house for some cookies and candies after they were at the youth group at the other end of the village. They all call her Tanta (aunt) Valya.
Next Sunday we'll go for our once a month visit to Morningstar church in Dnepro and hear Scott Crawford's first sermon there. He will have someone who will translate it into Russian for the rest of the congregation.
There were two more calves born today, one calf in the morning and another this evening before milking.
This afternoon we drove Inna, the newest member of our household into Zaporosia to the dentist, she had a bad tooth pulled and she'll need a few more visits to fix the rest. We had to buy antibiotic and pain pills for her on the way home.
We saw this firetruck driving down the highway on the way into the city and when I saw it again on the way out of the city, I took some photos. I assume that it's not the newest one they have.
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