It started to snow on Tuesday night. By Wednesday mid-day there were a couple of inches on the ground and snowing heavily. I called Timmy's gymnastics coach, and she said classes were canceled until Monday. The violin teacher canceled her class with the girls, too. It snowed and it snowed. The children were extatic: Anna said, "This is as good or even better than in America!" This is our third winter here, and we did not get as much snow in the first two winters here, combined.
So, Wednesday afternoon, having promptly completed their school, the kids went out to play in the snow. Snow angels! Tunnels! Snow tasting! Rolling down a small snow bank! The snow was too dry to make a snow man, but everyone had fun nonetheless.
It kept snowing and snowing. Yesterday the kids were making more tunnels, since the drifts were close to 3 feet high. Today they made snowmen.
Jamie got out and shoveled yesterday. Then it showed some more, so he shoveled some today. We never bought a snow shovel here, since we hardly got any snow the previous two winters. Jamie used a regular dirt shovel. When he came in, he was sore and tired. He said he was sure happy we did not have a car, otheriwise he would have to shovel the driveway, too (the snowdrift/snowbank there is about 4 feet deep). Tomorrow I will help Jamie shovel the street in front of our house.
I went out today to pay some bill and to buy some food. After 3 days of snowing, the streets are not plowed, but the transportation is running. The buses, trolleybuses and cars drive slowly on the crumbly snow. Some routes are changed because of ice on the roads. Even downtown, in front of the "White House" nothing is cleared. I saw some ladies chopping packed snow with dirt shovels just like ours and hauling the cut blocks of snow away on sack cloth, and that was all I saw being done.
A pleasant surprise: instead of going to a bank teller to pay a telephone bill, we can now go to a machine like ATM, punch in our phone number and pay it there.
The post office was busy, as usual, so I probably spent close to an hour there, waiting in line, then waiting for the clerk to get what I needed.
I stopped by a supermarket to get some bread, but the shelves were bare. The truck has not made it to the store yet. The meat section and the deli section were scarce, but other isles looked normally full. The supermarket seemed busier than usual, but that's understandable, since small grocery stores probably have trouble getting delivery trucks to their doors.
The bus ride home was not particularly pleasant, since it was packed with people eager to get places (transportation is not running 100% yet). It was good to be home.
Perekopskaya Street, one of the major roads in Kherson, after three days of snowfall.
