Other stuff

 Some other highlights of the last week: Monday we didn't have students in for dinner because Victor had car trouble. Tuesday became pizza night after a late afternoon staff meeting, and we had cake a day late for Oksana's birthday. In a first I had leftover pizza for the next day, but I did make a lot of coleslaw they filled up on. There's going to be a few schedule changes for students and a few other changes suggested by the new people we're going to try. 

 

Monday morning I rode along as Garry went to breed cows in two different villages, one he'd never been to before. It was a wonder we found the village and then the right street, as there were no signs or house numbers on it. At one point he turned at a red fence according to the directions she'd given over the phone. Garry saw an older lady outside and decided to ask where we were, and amazingly it turned out she was the caller. She'd gotten his phone number from a place in another village he'd bred a cow in recently. She told him she used to milk cows at a collective in the old days.

Then we drove back through the village to put more money on Garry's phone as he'd run out so he couldn't call the last lady back when we were trying to find the right street. We met a guy who'd phoned that morning from Dnepropetrovsk Sharokey at the store in that town and followed him to his house to breed a cow there. New customer, but Garry is often breeding cows in that village, apparently they don't have a bull in town anymore. It's sometimes luck or good guesses, when he finds the right place, often he tells them to slow down because his Russian is not good on the phone, with so many new people calling this year, but if Garry doesn't understand the directions over the phone, he asks to meet them somewhere. After his cow was bred the guy said "watch this" and fed her some pumpkins.

We did get some rain Friday, but not as much as Garry would like. The students and I made "sweet pizza" with apples that morning. Bear and I did a three mile walk before I made a quick stir-fry for lunch. My wash was rescued off the clothesline by Garry when the rain started around two instead of seven PM.

It's late and Garry is sleeping. I am waiting to get in the bathroom as the girls were all doing night milking and are going through bathroom to shower, one after the other. He had English classes today, and bred cows for people before and after our trip to Dnepro. I got groceries and did some cross-stitch and people watching. 

I rode along on his Saturday afternoon cow breeding trip that featured a couple kilometres of bad field road. The van really was that tilted as it looks in the photo. The road had a gully washed out of it that he was trying to straddle. At least he knew where we were going. They have eight cows, so he's been there before. The road was better before all the rain this summer.