Work progress

 Here are some photos from the work on the group home that has taken place since Garry left last week, thanks to Maria who has emailed them to me. As you can see the outside is finished and they are hard at work finishing the bathrooms.

Maria

Karina

Julia

even Polo

 The new family is staying at our house while they, Max and the students work on finishing the new house. The new students are scheduled to arrive July 20th, hopefully it will be ready around that time! Most of the new students are girls, so the new house will have female students. Garry will be flying back to Ukraine on the same day.

Nikolai seems to have a hedgehog!

Getting ready for next year

Garry is busy getting the new house ready for next year's students. The septic system was finished last week.  He was tiling floors in the parents side of the house this week, the bathroom and kitchen area. The main kitchen and student bathroom still need to be tiled. He is buying the laminate flooring for the rest of the house.  Rooms have been painted and Garry hopes the family will be able to move in within a short time frame. They are moving to the village and will be living in our house for a few weeks while Garry joins me in Canada for our son's wedding and our daughter's too!
Garry says he has been interviewing for new students do next year and he has two guys and eight girls so far, so it looks like the new home will be for females.
The other news is the container with farm equipment in has been loaded and is on its way to Ukraine.
 Finally the long awaited  hooking up to the power should be done before the end of July. We really will be ready by the fall to use the new classroom built last year and get cows milking in the barn over there when we are hooked up to the electrical grid. This week our guys got the poles installed, the local electrical company needs to install one on village land and a transformer iput in before the wires are attached to hook the buildings up.

School year end picnic

With a few of the students (the younger Sasha and Valera) heading off for the summer to work elsewhere, there was a year end picnic at the pond with shishlik on the fire on Friday night.

at left is our newest group home family

It looks like everyone was there (even Polo) except me (Teresa) and Nastya, who did not return to school after visiting her father for his birthday the week before I left for Canada. She had decided she wanted to study at a sewing trade school next year and live with her father in the fall. The day before she left, she was disappointed to find out her mother is alive but does not want to meet her. We will miss her smiling face.

The new group home family was there, the one that will be moving into the new house, the other two house families and Maxim Rudei with Yulia and baby Vika. Max supervises student work, especially when Garry is gone.

mmm, shislik

Maria and Julia with little Vika

Sasha with the six year old daughter from the new group home

LOOK Garry IS ON CRUTCHES

Looks like she's on Valera's shoulders now

Earlier on Friday it was work day and the students were working on the final coat of stucco for the new house, looks like white is the color!

Cooking class and Sasha

As you can see the other Sasha (in blue) returned last month after he turned 18. He has been living at our house, instead of the boys house, but I think he finds it a little boring, so he may move into the new house in September. He plans to go work in Odessa for the summer, staying with friends, and returning in the fall. Most of the students will work on the farm for the summer. They get paid extra for doing hard work like haying. Some of the boys got paid extra for digging holes for a cistern and septic system at the new house, too.

Garry is trying to get the new house livable on the group home parents side anyway, before he leaves on June 23rd, because we have found a family to live there. They have two daughters, 16 and 6 years old and are from eastern Ukraine. At the present time the family is staying in one room in a church attic in the city.

Here are some photos from my last week of English classes, where I decided to combine English and cooking and we talked about recipes and some days they came into the kitchen and cooked. Tuesday we made meatloaf patties (or cutleta in Russian)  in the microwave and thumbprint cookies. Sasha, Karina and Valera did most of the making, while everyone else wrote out the recipes in Russian from the English version. Even Maria came for this class. Normally she has a break with Garry while I teach English, because no one tries to figure out what I am saying if there is a translator in the room.

Wednesday we tried out an oven baked chicken breast and american-style cole slaw. Tasting is their favorite part, and after Garry's class finished that day they had a sampler plate to eat. On Thursday we did my pizza (dough and sauce) recipe. After the boys finished moving corn to the upstairs bin that afternoon, Valera, Julia and Karina (they had been painting the fence) helped make the pizza for everyone (Nastya was visiting her father.) The group home families came and we ate outside, the kitchen was pretty warm from cooking. Garry and the students got in a couple games of UNO outside on the table, except Kolya who had to milk that evening. He came in and got some leftover slices of pizza for the milker ladies to try.