Trade school update

Two weeks ago was the fall school break and a few students were away, the ones who stayed in the village were still helping with milking (the ones who left switched with students who were here) however no classes and no Friday work or Monday and Wednesday afternoon work like school weeks. The past week was the week that the house parents were teaching, and we had some complaints about student behavior. The house parents have started an anti-smoking campaign - all but two students smoke to varying degrees by choosing between having tea and cookies during class breaks or you can go out in the cold to smoke.

 Next week it will be Garry (with Maria translating) and I teaching, and we seem to not have as many problems with students fighting among themselves or inattention. We are back to eight students with the reappearance of Kolya #3, who had come for a week and been gone for two, although he still seems to have trouble understanding the system here (getting paid but then paying for food and utilities), and Simeon, who was away for more than a week for the break and his birthday. Strangely these two boys look so much alike, Garry and I have trouble telling them apart.

Karina (hiding her cigarette) and Simeon

We had one prospective student out overnight on Wednesday, but decided not to have him join us, because we are really not set up for students with mental disabilities, and we have one or two borderline guys already. It would be wonderful if we could help more of these kind of people, because they have a bleak future in Ukraine. Adult facilities are rather like prison, and on the street they are easily taken advantage of.

The old roof is off, the strapping is going on

Garry was checking out how many pieces of roofing there are 

They will get all the soffit and fascia on too

The roof is finally being finished on the old part of the boys' house. Garry hired some local guys a couple weeks ago, it looks like the left over metal roofing from the addition's roof will work and we bought the wood needed to strap it. The shefer (asbestos roofing sheets) taken off the house roof will be reused to fix the roof on the remodeled trade school barn. Our guys have been fixing the roof of the barn by removing broken pieces and using good ones from another section to patch with, because the stuff for sale now has a different size wave in, and each section going down needs to be the same type. Garry had planned to do the final section with new pieces, but we will see how much will need to be purchased now with the recycled pieces to fill in.

the barn roof