Moo-oosings by the Verhoog family: Back in the village

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Back in the village

We landed in Kyiv on time at 1:15, got through customs, Garry picked up our checked bag off the conveyor belt, and after going up and down a couple escalators, found the door you could get outside though (like Toronto, only ticketed passengers can get into the building because of covid). Did not get told to quarantine (it seems Canada is a green country, you just have to prove you have health insurance.)

Well after a fairly uneventful trip back, Garry is off checking out how things are in the village. He's already bred someone's cow, and Max and the guys are putting the parts we brought into the skid steer. We also brought a chain for the chopper (forage harvester) that weighed 25 pounds in our 50 pound suitcase, so as you might think, we didn't bring a lot of stuff back this trip. Our economy fares did not include a checked bag, so we economized to one 90 dollar checked bag fee going back to Ukraine, on the flights to Canada, we each had one, mine was crocheted Christmas presents, while Garry's was the Crawfords last suitcase.

That suitcase got a ride to Saskatchewan with our son and his family last weekend and Scott and Shannon picked it up Sunday as they were in the Fort Qu'Appelle area. Garry also brought a few things for Marina and family from her mother in his carry on, a backpack of stuff for Steve and Jo (more stuff they left behind when they returned last year, including lego for the boys. I mailed Maryna's stuff to Calgary after we got out of Garry's isolation, but we didn't get the backpack to Steve and Jo until Wednesday night as they invited us to dinner and a bed for the night at their new house in Winnipeg before we flew out.

While they were unpacking their bag of stuff they found a mystery Bible, which Garry had missed while taking out the stuff for Maryna, so they will mail Jenya his Bible! Micah and Crystal were in the city and picked up our car and took it back to the farm. We had a lovely evening with the Harder family (I wonder if they have finished the 1500 piece puzzle we worked on?) and Steve drove us to te airport in the morning at seven am.

Everything went smoothly, Garry was a little bored with four hour layovers between flights in both Toronto and Frankfurt. In Toronto, very few food places are open, so we ended up eating some very basic 10 dollar cheeseburgers for lunch in a very empty terminal, followed by eating the same meal Garry had on the way over in the plane. Air Canada in economy is serving the same cold vegetarian meal for covid protection/prevention? to everyone and eggplant parm really doesn't work as a cold salad. It came with a roll, butter, kale and mango salad and a brownie. Breakfast before landing early in Germany was better, a croissant and greek yogurt.

Garry found a taxi and agreed on a price to get to the hotel he parked the car at, he chatted with the taxi guy as he drove us there, then I waited with the suitcases while he got the car out of the lot. Unfortunately, the plug in the cigarette lighter air pump he had brought didn't want to work on the flat slow leak tire so he had to change it before driving out of the lot. It was nice outside waiting, warm and a little damp from an earlier rain, very enjoyable to breathe fresh air after almost 24 hours of mask wearing!

We grabbed drive thru hamburgers and slightly cold fries before hitting the highway and had a pretty good drive back to the village. It was longer than normal, we accidently missed a turn and took a different route that google maps gave us, ironically the way the taxi man had recommended to Garry to drive to Dnepro, but just around dark we found the road construction that had us driving on some interesting detours around the road they were fixing. As we got closer to home, we were going through a good rain, so we were happy to get home. Also happy we'd gotten Mc Donalds before leaving Borispol city as we did not drive by the usual McDonalds stop!