Thursday night it was more like five am when I got to sleep, and Garry's sleep was disturbed, but not by me. His phone rang at midnight, then again at three am, twice, because he woke up enough to answer it and discover it was a robocall in Ukrainian, so they phoned back! He decided to turn off his phone. At four am I was finally starting to fall asleep when someone knocked on our bedroom window. It was Yana, a cow was having a difficult birth, and she couldn't get Garry on the phone so she had biked over from the barn in the dark. She had tried to deliver it with the help of Dima, who was the night guard at the barn and had telephoned her.
Garry went to to barn and came back a half hour later. The calf had been coming out with a foot back. The head and one leg were out when he got there. Cows are born feet first, followed by the head, unless its breech when you have two back legs (but make sure those are back legs and the head isn't hiding, because that's a problem too). In this case, the calf was stuck because the second leg was not out. Garry had to push the calf back in, working against the cow, who was pushing hard to deliver the calf. By the time he had pushed the calf back in the uterus and reached around and found and got the second foot coming out with its mate, and they pulled the calf out, he was wet, dirty and exhausted (mostly because he is still recovering after being sick) but excited to tell me that they had a big live bull calf.
He jumped in the shower to clean up and put all his clothes in the washer at 4:30, while Leila, who was milking that morning muttered in the hallway that she was going to be late for the five am shift. One of the most challenging things about living with four girls is we only have one bathroom in this house (our dedicated group homes have two or three, with one for the family to use) and sometimes you really need to get in there when its being used.
Garry came back to bed, and we both went to sleep. I don't know when he got up, I slept on and off until I got up to cook the noon meal around eleven. I was awake a lot of the time because it was Friday morning and that's payday for the students. Garry was in and out of the bedroom and at one point Sasha came in the house when no one answered the door looking for Garry and I woke up to talk in Russian about where Garry was.
I thought he was at the guys house, working on the shower but I was wrong. They did finish tiling that one this week, I think Garry is grouting it right now. That house has three bathrooms but they should be able to use the new shower next week. Max and Garry will finish the one at the "new" house (2015) now. Max was installing the cement board yesterday.
Thursday morning I did not sleep in because it was cooking class day, and we were making hamburgers with yeast rolls and French fries. Vlad and Valera were there, having arrived back in the village the day before. We are not sure if they will be staying this time. They kept telling me that we should be having Pepsi with it like McDonald's. I was still working without a translator, but we muddled through, with the students guessing what I meant until we agreed. Mostly Kolya and Julia doing the helping and translating, and Valentina and Leila (who was cleaning up). Everyone, including Artom and young Vlad, the tractor drivers, who wandered in to see the guys, got a hamburger and a few fries to eat, with pickles on the side. I was told even baby Daniel had eaten, but I did not see that, or get any photos.
Hopefully Nellie will arrive back this weekend as planned (she did not make it earlier in the week) since Garry plans to teach Monday.
Garry was very excited Wednesday evening when Alona, Nikolai and the baby came over that he was able to hold him without Daniel crying. Garry held him all the time before going home for Christmas but when he returned Daniel would scream every time. It turns out the wifi was not working at their house, we had visitors every evening it seemed, Julia and Dima were over a lot, Dima helped with the new cow puzzle they put together. The students finished it while we were off buying semen (see previous post).
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