Ain't she cute?

Last night this cute little red heifer calf was born. Her mother is the nice red heifer Garry bought last fall near the river. She was afraid of all the other heifers, even though she was bigger than the rest when she came in the matrushka van - there were photos in September or October I think.

Garry was off to look at another pregnant heifer someone wanted to sell this morning. He thinks he will buy her, since one of the cows has aborted for a second time and is only giving a few liters of milk now, so he could sell her to make room for a new one. There are four cows in the herd that are supposed to calve in the next two weeks.



This morning the guys cleaned up the manure pile behind the barn, Max and Andree drove the tractors and wagons out to one of the fields to pile it there until it can be spread. Serosia loaded like three scoops of manure into each wagonload, with his loader tractor. They just finished the reno on the loader, rebuilding the bucket among other things, because they plan to use it when they start to remodel the old collective barn in March.

Garry and I walked over there this afternoon, he wanted to check something out in the barn they will be using, I'll put some photos I took up tomorrow. I looked outside at 9 pm, and the muddy ground is now covered with snow. There was a few little flakes falling at four when we were walking back, but I was pretty surprized to see that it was collecting out there, since it was above freezing most of the day.

We walked because the Lada is getting fixed, we will be carless for a couple days, it is getting the brakes done and the shocks again- it had shocks put in last spring.

Vacationing in Sharm El Sheikh

There were many British people there,(one gentleman took this photo for us) and we met some Germans, Dutch and even Danes. Many of the people at the resort were from Ukraine and Russia(and a few from other former Soviet countries, it is one of the places that they can go to without applying for a visa. That's how we got a package tour, and as one Ukrainian told us it is wonderful because it is all-inclusive. You can get visas when you arrive at the airport for 15 US dollars, we bought them, because you need them if you take a tour. However we ended up staying at the resort, except for a walk down the street a few times to use the internet, once I was going to post the following but the internet cafe would only open Microsoft word in Arabic, so I couldn't cut and paste it in so all you got to see that day was my bird photos.



Here's Garry with a cool tree with flowers that looked like bottle brushes!


Well Garry played so much volleyball and water polo the first week he had to take it easy for a couple days to start week two because his knees were swollen and sore. I guess we should have stayed for just one week! We are enjoying the snorkeling; there is a great reef with lots of different fish to see right off the docks in the photo. Since I just float on the top of the water and look I have only gone from one dock to the other, but have seen as many fish as when we took the boat snorkeling tour two years ago. Garry went for a couple long morning swims, but the water is pretty cold, not like it was the first time we went to Sharm El Sheikh with Seth and Jonah in May 2010.


Garry and I have been reading some Michener books, we both read Caravan and I am re-reading Hawaii. I have been working on a new crochet project and doing some watercolor sketching, and have done aqua-aerobics some mornings. We have gone to the internet café down the street four times, it is 6 dollars for a half hour. The hotel has wireless, but charges about five times that with a half hour minimum, so we haven’t used it. We have CNN for news (we know all about Jeremy Lin and Whitney Houston- but I am wondering about the Flyers and Sixers) and a couple English channels that mostly show movies when we are indoors.


Getting ready to have the pretty girls stand on top of the nails on his stomach with the broken glass under his back.


We have had a couple unusual things happen- during the fakour show (the guy with the nails) I told you about last post, it sprinkled giant raindrops for a couple minutes, which doesn’t happen often here. We have only seen 3 shows, since some nights we fall asleep before 9:30 when they start.





Saturday night we saw the Oriental (or Egyptian) show with dancers and a guy who spin around for at least 5 minutes while doing things that were rather like juggling while spinning. Garry said he got dizzy just watching him. We also had a very nice meal at the Egyptian style restaurant at the beach front that night, and are looking forward to eating there again Thursday night. The rest of the time we eat at the main buffet restaurant or at the beach café for lunch (hamburgers, hotdogs and french-fries.)


Tuesday Garry was suffering with tummy troubles- strange because on last trip to Egypt he was fine, the boys and I were sick. Anyway we were sitting out on the balcony around 4:30 enjoying the warmer weather – it is back to highs of 26 C after a few days where it barely hit 20 (about 68 F) when there was a huge explosion with stuff blowing high up into the air off toward the beach- it must have been hundreds of feet from our room- we are one of two top floor rooms, there are five rooms in our villa. We were told it was one of the rooftop water heaters that blew up, and some debris drifted into the pool below us. They made everyone get out so they could clean it up-it was mostly yellow insulation. Hopefully no one was hurt.


We never did see where the explosion happened...

Back in the village

I have one last post to put up about our trip to Egypt, but it will have wait for tomorrow. Meanwhile, we are back in the village, and Garry is busy planning for his barn reno again. We came home from Kiev on the express train as planned, it spite of the change in times flying back- the carrier was changed in the two weeks we were gone. No problem, it was a nicer plane with better food, and we got through customs quickly and caught a bus to the train station, and got there with 35 minutes to spare. Garry ran over to Mc Donalds for some dinner, so we ate hamburgers after boarding the train.

Even met someone I know- a summer English Institute student and friend who happened to be in the same car or wagon, as they say here, we were in number four. I was pretty out of it by that point(feeling tired and sick), I think I finally caught what Garry had last week at the resort. Victor drove us home after the train got to Dnepro just after 11:30, say a bad accident on the highway, but we had no problems. Victor said it rained on Saturday.


The driveway is quite muddy, we drove to Metro this afternoon for groceries- the cats and boys had about run out while we were gone. It was so warm today that some of the village poultry were out this afternoon, I saw some geese and ducks along the main street and a rooster and couple hens at the edge of the village. I could see that lots of snow has melted already, the fields are looking bare, even muddy, with some snowbanks left in spots. The winter wheat fields are looking wet and brownish with a little green, the half-drowned look of spring. There was some snow flurries on the way to Dnepro and as we got back to the village, giant snowflakes were drifting down and sticking on top of the mud.

Garry walked down to the store before lunch to buy bread and something to drink- there wasn't a bottle of anything left in the house (and no milk they sold it all in the morning- the tank was empty.) He told me it was a good thing he had bought the kind of bread that comes in a plastic bag instead of the unwrapped kind today when he came in the house and changed his clothes and put the ones he was wearing into the washer. He was on his way home and thought he'd wash his boots off in a puddle, but when he stepped in it, he slipped on the ice hiding under the water and fell in. Must have been quite the splash, since the inside of his grocery bag was wet. He told Maxim that swimming was better in Egypt, because the water was warmer.

More Egypt

After a couple cooler days on the weekend we are back at 26 C and lying on the beach- well I was Garry was playing volleyball. I have done some aquasize in the pool, and some drawing and reading. I have got some interesting photos of some birds. We have seen a number of the little ones, but just this one big white bird hanging out near the pool in the hedges near our building. As you can see he caught a lizard while I was taking pictures.
We don't have a bird book, anyone know what kind of birds they are?

Hello from Egypt

That's right we went from minus 20 to plus 27 last Sunday. Garry is enjoying snorkling, playing beach volleyball and water polo- mostly with Russians and Ukrainians.

Its a nice resort- we have checked out some evening shows at the hotel. One had a guy who walked on braken glass- and then laid on top of it - and a bed of nails with four Ukrainian girls from the audience standing on him. We are going to be very brown in another week.

Nine months later...calves

As you know Garry bred a lot of cows in the village last spring, and he was delighted to go to a house in the village last week to breed a cow - a little early he told the lady, because the cow was only fresh 40 days, he is trying to get them to call him after 60 days. Next to the cow was her heifer calf from the AI Canadian bull Garry was using last year, born on Christmas day. The lady was ready to have another next year, because the calf is growing so fast.

On Friday Garry was called to Pervey Mai (first of May)a nearby village where he bred a number of cows last year. A lady wanted him to check her first calf heifer that had been milking for a few months, because she had not noticed her in heat (ready to breed) As far as Garry could tell, all is well with her, so maybe he or Max will be back there soon to breed the cow.

The lady was excited to show him the big bull calf and set of twin heifer calves that her two cows he bred last year had. She has the twins in a little room heated by a wood fireplace, since it as been so cold. It seems like everyone wants to have him breed their cows again, because the calves are so big and grow so fast. Yana was showing me in our barn in December how the AI bred ones grow so much faster than the regular ones.

Oh no!

What do you not want to see when you arrive at the airport? Flight delayed 3 hours!
We are flying a small Ukrainian airline to Sharm El Sheik UT air I think, and I was not hoping to see this- we were thinking when we arrived at 12:15 we'd be heading through check-in soon.

We left home at 3 pm with Maxim, our suitcases, all the church milk for Sunday morning, and a guy from the village who had asked Max for a ride to Dnepro. Max handed Kolia a breathmint when he got into the front seat- Max and I were sitting the back with a crate of smetana and the carry-on wedged between us. It didn't help the alcohol-cigarette breath, but he was happy for a ride and chatted for a while.



We dropped off Kolia at the outskirts of the city and brought the milk, cheese and smetana at Victor's house where the guys unloaded it- milk will easily stay cold until morning in this weather. Unfortunately Victor's German shepherd escaped from the yard and Garry and Max had to help Dan catch her before we left. We still got to the train station with time to spare.



We left Dnepro at 5:11 on schedule and Garry remarked as the train got going that it felt like we had a flat tire. Normally the train has a rocking sensation as it goes down the track, we were pretty tired of the shake and rattle by the time we got to Kiev at 11pm. Around six a mother and grandmother got on with a 3 year old and sat behind us- that child sang loudly until 9:30 with a few breaks for air. No one seemed upset about it. Garry got hungry - I had packed some brownies, since we were in the dining car (back half of our car)he bought a sandwich and chips and brought me a warm Coke.

Ukrainians would never drink cold pop in the winter- you would be sure to get sick. Ice cream will give you a sore throat in winter also. At the Metro grocery store last summer they put in little coolers by the checkouts. I bought one a couple weeks ago and realized they had turned them off - who'd buy cold drinks in the winter? last week I discovered one of ten was still turned on and got a cold drink.

Many people slept or watched the old Soviet movies they show on the televisions - they got the one working facing us around the time the little kid got on- one movie seemed to have the Russian Julie Andrews in, it had a big musical number with whistling truck drivers, and she was either in overalls - I think she pumped gas or a fancy dress going down the stairs in Odessa at the end, I think.

We pulled the luggage over to McDonalds from the train station - which was colder than normal inside- had some burgers and cold french fries and then pulled them back through the train station, down the stairs- escalator wasn't working and found a van to the airport for 30 grivna a person, he was full at 10 before 12 and took 25 minutes to get here, only stopped for 2 maybe three lights. Went through some yellow ones fast. Seats are packed - Garry is reading a book across from me and people are getting their luggage encased in plastic for 30 grivna. It's very popular for flying here- maybe no one will open your luggage?...

The people flying the other airline to Sharm El Sheik who were supposed to leave after us are going through check in now...nothing to do but wait and hope we get there sometime on Sunday morning.