Yesterday I spent much of the afternoon and evening trying to get through to Austrian airlines on the phone after we got a check-in email from Air Canada. Apparently my attempt on the web two days ago to ask for a refund hadn't worked and we were still booked from Winnipeg to Montreal ending in Vienna, only the Kyiv leg was cancelled. I finally got through this morning to someone, only to discover that my request had finally worked.
Yesterday Garry led prayer for Ukraine at church at both services at Emmanuel, and we were hosting family lunch, luckily my daughter in law was already making grilled cheese sandwiches and had warmed up the leftover chili by the time we got home.
I'll upload a video of him sharing and praying here. Remember Garry always calls the students kids and their kids our grandkids in Ukraine, I think he confused some people about whether our actual kids are in Ukraine right now.
Garry hasn't been sleeping well, sometimes he's awake in the middle of the night and calling for a video chat with Max, Victor or the students. This morning he was on a three way chat with Victor and Oleg. So we hear lots about what is happening in the village (Victor is actually in western Ukraine now). They have made a few changes to the routine with the war. They hadn't been able to sell milk for a couple days and so were selling it at a reduced price or giving it away to people who came to the barn (dumping some down the drain one day when they couldn't give it away). Yesterday there was fighting (a near riot ?) over getting free milk, so today they were giving only a half liter per person away because there was a truck coming from a factory to buy the rest at a reduced price.
They are only milking twice a day because the village office was worried about the noise of the vacuum pump, I'm not sure if it's because it might attract Russian attention or that it sounds kind of like an air siren. The cows will give a little less milk and probably eat a little less also. If the power goes off, hand milking will be very quiet. So far everything is working, but no one wants to drive to the city. Most businesses are closed there anyway.
From what I understand, a few refugees, mostly moms and kids from Zaporozhye that are staying in the village, some in our houses, are eating at our lunchroom with the students. Food supplies at the stores are almost gone. They are eating some of the stuff that I froze and canned last summer. If it gets bad they may kill a cow for beef. They cleaned up the cellars for places to stay if the war comes closer. Here's a photo of some kids playing in the basement of what was the Crawford house, where Oleg, Elena and family live, they have two family groups staying with them and their two boys and Elena's father. I'm assuming it's not quiet.
The students told Garry that the new Quonset storage barn vibrates when there is shelling in Zaporozhye, you can hear the metal rattling.
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