Back in the village

I'm back in the village, working on my jetlag, hoping to get prepared for the building/VBS team's arrival in (gulp) less than a week now. I arrived here Sunday night and sleeping at night has had mixed results, it should work itself out by the time they arrive next Wednesday. Interestingly, everyone on the plane had their temperature taken by two ladies with forehead readers before disembarking in Kyiv.

Today the government announced that all schools (including daycare and universities)  in Ukraine would be closed for three weeks starting Thursday. Not sure how this will affect our plans for VBS, since we were going to have it at the village school. We may hold it at the church and our classroom instead, and hope people send their children anyway.

 Blog posting has been hampered by leaving my tablet in the rental car. It was dark when I arrived at JFK airport and it must have fallen on the floor by my bag. Luckily it was found, but I didn't realize it was missing until I was going through security. It's now on its way back to my dads; since it was 33 dollars to ship it there, and 137 (US) to send it home to Canada. No, I did not check on sending it here, we plan to go home in April for Max Boradin's graduation, and I plan on a trip to NJ afterwards.

Otherwise, my flights were okay, although the first half of the flight over the ocean was rather bumpy, turbulence had the seatbelt lights lit for a couple hours. I thought I'd sleep on the flight but I think we were going through the offshore storm that was the remnants of the Tennessee tornadoes.

Shannon volunteered to continue teaching English class this Monday and Tuesday at eight am, although I did teach cooking class to everyone- even Sasha Borchuk came-  Wednesday at nine. We made a coffee cake and looked at old photos from the trade school blog while it was in the oven. I also handed out a pair of socks from America to everyone. I picked them up while looking for Garry's seeds for the garden. He plans to start tomato and pepper seeds any day now.

My only completed project since arriving was bleaching the mildew that was growing in the vinyl seal in the washer Monday morning, after I located the source of the awful smell in the the bathroom. Today I hope to go to Luda's old house with Garry to see what needs doing to put some of the team over there, figure out when we are moving the girls out so I can prep the bedrooms here, and figure where everyone will be staying, and get ready to cook a lot of food.

Garry, meanwhile, has been building the trusses for the house build with some of the students, and even started building exterior walls yesterday. I will try to get photos later today but here's a couple from one of the kids in the village (its four am as I type). The guys have been working on cementing the cistern they dug, too.

He's also ordered more lumber as they are going to build more trusses to double the size of the hay shed by the cow barn this spring. He says they used almost 100% of bales in the shed, but only half of the ones they stacked outside covered with plastic as the birds (and or mice) made holes in the the plastic and they spoiled from moisture.