of winter boots and such necessities of life

When I went back on Tuesday, I was able to send my family's Christmas presents (see previous post). It took one hour and almost $20 USD...but Christmas only comes once a year. :) The best moment was when the post office lady was gluing two envelopes together to fit the calendar (don't ask), and someone said something to her. Her reply was, "Be quiet, I'm busy and I don't want the people in America to laugh at how I put these envelopes together." So I assured her they wouldn't laugh. Family, please don't laugh. Besides, I was pretty impressed with her ingenuity.

Winter boots have been the other issue of the week. The soles of my boots are separating from the rest of them, due to the who-knows-how-many kilometers I've walked in the past year. Perhaps they are fixable, but they also look like I've walked long distances in them. So I took a poll of various Ukrainian women on the best place to buy boots. I've been told five different locations, plus three more locations for boot repair. It's a bit overwhelming.

So I did what I always do when confronted with difficult dilemmas of Ukrainain life, and asked Nadia, on the assumption that anyone with 10 children should know where to get good quality, relatively inexpensive items. She told me that the bazaar in Kharkiv is the best option, but that it's big and crazy, so maybe I should go with her sometime. Then today, when I walked Liza home from school and stopped by to get milk (and was also given rasberry jam and a cabbage), she had me try on two different pairs of knee-high winter boots that people had given her and that she said she didn't want anymore. The one pair pinched my toes and also appeared to be slippery on ice, if their wood floors are any example, but the other pair, which are fur-lined, fit well except for being a little snug at the top, which Nadia said could be fixed by taking the boots to a repair shop and getting a little elastic inserted. I attempted to protest, but it was futile, and now I have new brown boots. I love Nadia...she was like, "If you want, you could still get fancy ones, but these will be good for Balaklia."

The Yukhymets family has done so much for me over the past year, and I feel like I can't figure out how to ever repay them. Yesterday I gave Nadia some books for English handwriting practice that Brandi gave me for the kids, but it seems so small a thing in return for being my family here in Ukraine. I guess that's part of being the family of God.

Jim Perkins's 6th grade world studies class at Lakeview Middle School (he was my 8th grade science teacher) wrote letters to my 7th form, and they arrived yesterday. I told the kids today that they'll get them on Monday, which had them all excited. I considered making it a prerequisite that they had to get at least 50% on their spelling tests, but based on previous scores, I'd only be passing out 3-4 letters. And I'm not sure if an American letter, while a great incentive, could improve their scores THAT much. :)