Busy in the snow

Bet you regular readers have wondered why I haven't posted in ten days.  We had no internet in the village for more than a week! It came back on yesterday afternoon as we were leaving to go to our follow up group in Kamskoaya.

Driving has been interesting for the last week because we finally had snow, and not just a little. We were supposed to go there last week Wednesday,  but it was canceled for the first snowstorm,  and its snowed and blown a few times since. While not perfect,  main highways have been plowed, and mostly by some new snowplow trucks we haven't seen before.

We bought some paint last week and Garry and I repainted the kitchen/living room area on Friday and Saturday. Today (Thursday) I finally got back to painting and did the rest of the hallway.  Our golden paint was a little more orange than I thought,  but it really brightens the house up after ten years. It also covered up the cherry pitting juice stains!

The students were excited for me to be  back teaching English and mostly excited about Wednesday cooking class.  Last week we made one pot spaghetti and this week soup. I think they mostly enjoy working together and eating together.  

We have three new students - actually old students- as Karina and Vika have returned after living and working in the city didn't work out, and Misha Mazhara (Vasa's twin) has finished his junior agronomist trade school- he has a certificate. We didn't realize that Misha would be coming on Tuesday evening when we went to pick the girls up after watching the English movie of the week.  The back seat of the little car was packed since we had picked up more frozen semen in Dnepro that afternoon for breeding cows. The liquid nitrogen filled tank took up one seat behind Garry,  leaving three people in the spaces for two. The two girls mean we are at four in our house again.  

On the weekend we took students on two excursions,  Saturday night we took a big group to city mall for grocery shopping and McDonald's after they got their salaries for the week. French fries are a very popular treat. Five month old Matthew came too.

Sunday we went into Morningstar church with the van and had another car full, six or seven students and a baby. Everyone was well behaved, even little Danil,  who's 16 months old now. We parked on the main street Robotcha and walked in.

Garry and I had an English class at two, so after church we dropped the students off to spend the afternoon downtown.  Garry had another group to meet with nearby at four o'clock so I did a little shopping and picked up some buns, lunchmeat and apples to hand out to everyone on the trip home. 

With no internet for a week, and very limited cell data inside the house,  it was hard to keep track of the outside world, including how my dad was doing since he's in the hospital with flu and pneumonia.  We got the DVD collection out to watch some movies. It's good to finally be able to blog!