New Apartment!

Our new view! You can't really tell from this picture, but the moutains in the background are really spectacular!

Well, it's been a busy month, but we're finally back online, and fully in our new apartment. Thanks for all of you who have been thinking of us during this time! It's definitely been ... challenging, but we hope that we've put the remodeling and moving behind us for now, and we're finally in our new place.

As we mentioned in our last post, we were so thankful that some family members were able to help us out with organizing a loan to buy an apartment here in T-land. That way, we can do our paperwork much easier, as well as not having to worry about rent increases and the moves that come with renting a place here.

And what a place he provided! In the middle of town, so we can walk most everywhere (we don't have a car) that we need to go. It's almost 700 square feet, which would be smallish in the West but is actually quite nice for here. There are two bedrooms, so we can have a separate living room (most Russian apartments have someone sleeping in what we Westerners would call the "living room"), plastic windows (with good insulation from Siberian winters), and it's just generally above and beyond what we hoped or expected! The one disadvantage is that it's on the eighth floor, and since the elevator is frequently out of service that means a lot of stairs with two little ones! But, we figure they'll be old enough to climb them soon, and in the meantime we're enjoying the spectacular views from the balcony (we're one of the highest buildings in the city).

So, on to the pictures:

Most of the place was in pretty good shape; the one exception was the bathroom. Not the bathroom with the toilet, but the "vannaya" (remember, bathrooms here are separated into two separate rooms). The washing machine was on the same side as the faucet, meaning there was no sink. We could have dealt with that, but coupled with the fact that the bathtub was 1.4 meters long (for comparison, I'm 1.94 tall), we decided to do some remodeling. In the above picture, we've knocked out the tile wall holding in the tub and removed it; below, you can see the almost-finished product.

Actually, we did a bit more after this next picture raising the tub, and I even put in a few tiles on the end where the tub didn't go all the way to the wall, but I'm too lazy to go take more pictures of that (plus, there are dishes in the tub due to a kitchen sink issue that I'm working on today).

The only other major things to do was new carpet in the boys' room (you can see that a few pictures down) and new paint in the living room. The lovely B decided that lavender was the order of the day.

Above: first coat of paint. Below: mid-move.

The kitchen really didn't need anything at all. The cabinets the previous 0wner left behind are great! All we had to do was move our stuff in and plug it in.

Of course, B couldn't let it go that easily, so she found a lamp that needed to be rewired for the living room. Here I'm struggling to fix it, along with David, who came over for dinner only to be ambushed with tasks that needed a third or fourth hand. I think he looks thrilled.

So, without further ado, I present to you the finished product. The living room:

The kitchen:

The boys' room:

I don't have a picture of our room, but it's pretty much the same as the boys', just with a double bed instead of a bunkbed.

Finally, just so this post isn't all about the new apartment, here's a picture of Matthew out in the new snow:

I think we may have worked Steven a little too hard during the move:

And that'll do it for the Wandering Family this week. Thanks for checking in. The other big news is that I think I've found a language helper, and we're hopefully going to start meeting this week. So, not only are we into our new place, we're hopefully set up to start getting serious about the T language and culture as well. He really is good!