The New Apartment!
OK, so we've been just a little slack on getting this up, seeing as we've been in our new place now since Wednesday and had a good internet connection the whole time. However, the obvious theme for our first post here was the apartment, thus meaning that we needed some photos of the place. This, in turn, means that we had to unpack everything and clean it all up, so thus the delay. It is true that we were sleeping here as of Wed., but that just means that the boxes were in the apartment. It's taken us a few days to get stuff unpacked and for B to get the decor on the walls, etc. Now, however, we're ready to reveal it.
In a word, the apartment is great! We've been really fortunate to find such a nice place, and at a price that was less than some of the other places we had thought about. We're so grateful for it. It's what they call here a "3-room" apartment, meaning that not counting the hall, the kitchen or the bathroom(s), it has three rooms. It would be called a 2 bedroom apartment back in the US, but we've got it set up with a living room, our bedroom, and a combination office/Steven's room. Honestly, I don't think we've ever lived anywhere this nice before. On to the pics:
OK, so I had to put one in here of Steven. He's now taken his first step, but doesn't show any interest in getting that second leg off and actually walking. Here he curled up in a pile of clothes that was ready to be put away and B got a cute shot.
"It wasn't me!!"
OK, so Russians do bathrooms a little differently. The toilet is in one little closet-sized room, and the shower and faucet are in another room. Really ingenious - that way someone can be in the shower and you can still use the bathroom if you need to. Which is good, since apartments with more than one bathroom (in the American sense) are quite rare here.
Here's just a couple of pictures of our new kitchen, which is B's pride and joy. She absolutely loves the decor that we inherited from the last tenants, so she's pretty much kept it as is.
Here's the view from our kitchen window. We're quite fortunate to be able to look out and see green in our little park, and there's another quite large park just a 10-minute walk away. We're also just a 12-minute walk from the metro or bus, so it's easy to get places. If we feel the urge to walk to school, it takes just under an hour, but usually we take a bus. I'm starting to get a sense for how cold it will be here in the winter, though. The other day, as I walked to class, I could see my breath. Meanwhile, for those of you back in NC enduring 100 degree weather (that's 35+ for those of you here), it's still mid-August. Here, however, it already feels like fall.
Here's our nice new living room. The door there on the right leads to a small balcony, which we haven't used much yet but maybe if it gets warm again we might.
OK, so now on to the What Is It For?™ for the week. Last week, we had a picture of a metal box in the metro, and Lydia gets all the points for recognizing it as a box for your bikes. Of course, you don't actually have a bike at each end, but the idea is that you ride your bike from your house to the metro, park it in the box, and then ride the metro to work. A good system, if it's not 10 below. Then, the concept of bike riding takes a big hit. Big bonus points go to an unexpected (at least to me) winner of the "Who Said That?" contest, Rich. I'm disappointed in you, Martha - as a well-advertised Andy Griffith fan you should have caught the line B put up ("His whole body is a weapon!").Anyway, this weeks puzzle is from a street near where we were living. Parked next to the road there were two of these small metal boxes (which seem to be a theme in this section) with windows, this time. They're about 15 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 6 feet tall. Any guesses as to what happens with these? As always, your guesses are welcome in the comments section.
