Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving, complete with turkey, stuffing, green beans casserole, home made cranberry sauce and store-bought cranberry jam (for those who prefer smooth texture); pumpkin bread, toss salad, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and raspberry pie. Thanks, Melinda, for the casserole, pumpkin bread and salad!

We bought the turkey at the central market (see previous post for picture of the meat section). We arrived Wednesday at the closing of the market and asked for a turkey. The lady said she had a great selection and began pulling turkeys out of a tarp bag underneath the counter. We asked her for a big one, and she smiled and said she had the perfect one. She dug down deep and pulled out a scrawny 7 lb bird. We called it our cornish hen turkey. It cooked up delicious, and we even had leftovers for turkey sandwiches the next day. In the picture above the turkey is in the upper left corner of the picture by the mashed potatoes.
Nadia wore her Pilgrim/prairie girl dress, Anna was our Indian girl, Timmy was wearing black for Pilgrim's clothes, and Polly was cute as a button.
With no football game to watch (too early AND no satellite TV), we took a walk around our neighborhood.
We eventually went down to the Dnieper River. Our kids really like living by the river. We don't swim in it (too polluted and too many sewers going into it), but it sure is fun to watch barges, cruise ships, tug boats, sailboats and motorboats go up and down the river. This time of the year it's mainly barges and tugboats.
Isn't it fun to watch a barge open its cargo compartment? (See the triangular shape close to the barge's front?) I wonder if this will become our Thanksgiving Day tradition.

A Few Pictures of Life in Ukraine (by Julia)

We took these pictures within the last couple of months. This is just a glimpse of our life in Ukraine.

This is one of our radiators. It has hot water pumped through it by a natural gas-burning boiler. 95% of all buildings and houses here are heated this way. Apartment buildings are usually hooked up to a central boiler, which can create problems for people in apartments when the people in charge fail to turn it on for various reasons (see our previos post). People in houses usually have their own boilers, which allows them to heat the house whenever they want it.

Meat Market: one can find virtually anything, from pig feet to chicken livers. Everything is displayed nicely. We used to like our stakes cooked medium. Now we like our meat well done.

Dairy products, anyone? The meat and dairy pavillion is not air conditioned. This summer Kherson averaged 90 degrees F during the day. This lady sells dairy: home made sour cream, butter, milk, buttermilk, cottage cheese. Some of our friends buy only home made dairy stuff. We still prefer refrigerated store brands.

We do not know what this octapus-looking thing is. Our guess is it's telephone wires and TV cable wires consolidated into one pipe. We saw this in our teammate's apartment building. We just had to take a picture of it for our Electrical Engineering friends.

Polly and Tim playing at a playground. Most city playgrounds look like this one: old and delapidated. Recently we saw 2 new playgrounds installed downtown. We are hoping to try them out soon.
This is the truck that sucks out the contents of our sewer pit. Jamie is helping Andrei with the hose. Our pit holds close to 3 truckloads worth of liquid, but we usually have Andrei pump out 2 loads. We fill the pit up within a month.

This store remains open while half of the building is under construction. Hard Hat Cafe?

No dryer -- no problem. This handy dryer rack (thanks, Julia's Mom!) is conveniently located by the radiator, which enables the laundry to dry overnight. Currently there are 2 loads getting dry here. Sometimes we use radiators in kids' bedrooms as drying racks, too.

This is our washer that came with the house we are renting. It holds 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs) of dry laundry. No, I do not do laundry every day. I do 2-3 loads 4 days a week, since we have limited drying space and can only hang out a certain amount of clothes at a time. It takes me a couple of days to fold the laundry, since it takes about 12 hours to dry. In the summer I hung the laundry on the balcony, and it dried in 1 hour.

Last but not least: this is one of my favorite pictures of Kherson. Some parts of the city look very rural, complete with beautiful rose bushes and flowers. The street eventually slopes down toward the Dnieper River.

BRRRR!!!

Sunday we had our first snow storm of the season. I would guess we only got about 2 inches of snow and it is all melted as the temperatures are slightly above freezing and the ground is not frozen yet. I heard that in Kiev they received around 7 inches of snow. Our kids would have liked to have gotten that much snow.

It was not so much the snow that caused problems, but the strong winds that the storm brought with it. I was out on the streets yesterday, and I saw big tree limbs and even whole trees down (I heard today that 600 trees fell on Sunday) and heard that one section of the city did not have power back on yet. We only lost power briefly, and it was back on when we got home from church. We had an adventure just getting to church. Sunday was the first Sunday School class our church has had in a couple of years. Knowing that our children would make up a good majority of the class we decided to go there first and then on to the church in Tsurupinsk where I was preaching and serving the Lord's Supper. We made it to Sunday School without any problems but it started snowing during the class. When class was over and we were ready to leave we could not find a taxi to take us to Tsurupinsk. When it rains or snows here, the taxis become super busy as people want to get home fast. It is virtually impossible to call in for a taxi. The dispatchers take the phone off the hook because all the cars find customers right on the street. We should have arrived to church about 30 minutes before the start and instead arrived 5 minutes late.

We heard that schools were canceled yesterday. This is partly due to the storm (no electricity in part of the city) and partly due to the way they heat the buildings. All the schools and apartment buildings are on central heating system that delivers hot water to the buildings. This means that the city decides when to turn the heat on for the city (and when to turn it off in the spring). I am told that they turn it on only after the average daily temperature is below 8 C (46 F) for three consecutive days. The last couple of weeks we have been hitting freezing temperatures at night, while we are still in the 50s during the day. People do have electric space heaters that they can run and have some heat but the major heating is not turned on until the 8 C mark has been met. Well, we had not reached that magical mark until the weekend, so the heat in the city was just turned on yesterday. In some places the heat has not been turned on or was turned off today as temperatures reached close to 55 F. During the weeks of no heat the schools had shortened days and let their students out aroung 11 or 11:30 am. We heard of some schools where their high schoolers wear their winter coats during the class. Retired people and those on limited income do not have the money to pay for the electrical heat. There are a couple of retired ladies from our church who live in cold apartments. Our kids' gyms are still without heat. The girls' coach said there will be some class cancelations later this winter due to cold temperatures in the gym. Tim's coach said that the competition they had planned will be moved back one month because there is no heat in the gym.

Those in private houses have their own heating system so we have heat whenever we want it. We also have drafty windows so the heating is not very efficient. Since this cold spell has come, the house has been around 64 F. We are hesitant to turn the heat higher because we are not sure what it will do to our gas bill. Here, the more you use, the higher price you pay for cubic foot of gas. I suppose in a way it's socialized heating for everyone, as you make those who have more space to heat pay for those who have smaller places to heat. No wholesale approach here.

We have read in the local newspaper that some nearby villages have not yet signed contracts with the gas company so that they can provide heat for the schools and apartments. Hopefully, it will not get much colder for a while.

The Retreat

We had a great time at our MTW Ukraine Retreat. It was tough to be on a train for 4 nights in a span of 7 days. The kids however were excited about the train rides and enjoyed them. We even found a way to have Polly sleep on the floor so we did not have to worry about her falling out of the lower bunk. (On the last trip, Nadia fell off the top bunk! She landed on her mattress and was not hurt at all.) The retreat was in the Carpathian Mountains. It was breathtaking to see the fog in the morning only to be burned away to show the beauty of God's creation. Our country team leader challenged
us through a series of talks on "Goodness". It is appropriate for this culture because it can become tiring doing good when everyone else is grouchy and looking out for themselves. Looking at God's goodness and our need to seek strength from Him was refreshing in and of itself. Now we need to live out the exhortation to "not grow weary in doing good."(Galatians 6:9)

Here are some pictures from the retreat.

Each "coupe" has 4 bunks. Train tickets include bedding (a thin mattress, a pillow, a wool blanket and sheets). Some travelers find out the hard way that mattresses tend to slide.

The beautiful fog that we observed 3 mornings we were there.

Thornton kids with the Carpathian mountains in the background.