Our Four Walls

You all are probably curious about our living arrangements, and I was putting it off because it is hard to know where to start and where to end. And I was secretly hoping Matt would test the blogging waters one of these fine days. The brothers found an apartment for us in the same building they live in! Amazing, really. It is a 10-story building and we are on the 7th floor. Apartment buildings here are different, in that there isn't one main entrance with long hallways connecting all the apartments, rather, there are multiple entrances (I think our building has 7), each with an elevator (if it is a newer building like ours) and staircase and there are only 3 or 4 apartments on each floor; vertical hallways, if you will. So, we are in the same building, but have to go outside and enter at a different point to get to the brother's bach. Some aspects of our place are way better than we could've hoped for, and others a bit frustrating. It is huge by Russian standards, and even a bit larger than we need for our family -- 101 meters square (1087 sqf). Built-in closets are not a thing over here, so they call it a 3-room apartment, where two rooms have beds, dressers and armoires, and the 3rd has a futon and holes in the wall where the TV used to be mounted. The rooms are all connected by a large entrance hall area that has closets and a terribly out of tune piano. We are looking forward to getting the piano tuned so we can start learning the new tunes in our hymn book! The bedrooms are also connected in the back by a small dirty balcony with many broken floor tiles. If we decide to stay in this apartment we will probably buy some squishy gym floor tiles to put down out there so the kids can play without cutting themselves. There is a small room with shelves (which we have crammed full of stuff the owners left behind) and a washing machine, a small room with a sink and toilet, and another small room with a bathtub, sink and mirror. There aren't any power

outlets in any of these small rooms, and the large rooms and kitchen only have two outlets each! For some reason our bathtub room always smells like french fries, but the apartment otherwise doesn't have an odor, thankfully! Russian cities all have central hot water heating, which they turned on already a few weeks ago. Indoor spaces are all kept smoking hot, so even though we have all of our radiators closed we have to keep our windows open to maintain a balmy 75-80 degrees.

The kitchen is the most unfortunate room in our apartment; it was really grimy when we moved in, and we still haven't gotten all of the cabinets cleaned enough to dare use them. I guess we have to save something to keep my parents busy when they come visit, right mom? There also isn't a toe kick installed under the cabinets so anything that gets kicked under there is lost forever in the disgusting abyss. We replaced the broken oven with one that makes lovely apple pies and chocolate chip cookies, so we are glad for that. The cabinets were once nice, and look to be IKEA, but the counter is now chipped and stained, and the hardware on the drawers are mostly broken. The sink is tiny, which is certainly not ideal for hand washing dishes all. day. long. And there is a broken dishwasher taunting us. I am tempted to just buy a new one, but then we would need to triple our collection of dishes, and we can't take any of it home with us some day so it just seems like a waste. Anyway, we have a place to cook and prepare food, so I really shouldn't complain.

We really love our location! In addition to being able to walk to the Sunday afternoon meeting, we are at a major transportation hub for trams, buses, mini-buses, trolley buses and the subway system. We also have a really nice large park behind our place with walking paths, benches and playgrounds. We have a plethora of grocery stores, markets, shops and malls all within a few minute's walk. And so we really have it quite good. We are considering shopping around for a different place, but 3-room apartments are rare and we really like knowing that we can accommodate visitors and still have doors we can shut to contain the kids. We are also really tempted to fully pursue this dream and buy a little place just out of town where we can have goats and chickens, but there are obvious challenges that would present. So we will probably just stay put at least through the winter and see how that goes before we make any big changes. Stay tuned!