Our home - for now

For all you that keep asking where we are staying, I am sorry I haven’t replied. We are staying in the apartment that the Rast’s stayed in. Initially, when we asked Elliana a couple of weeks ago about whether this apartment was available, she told us that the apartment owner had said that we could not stay here because we have children with us. Then, in Oleg’s words, “We say please, please” and the owners finally said yes. I think it might have had something to do with them being able to charge us more money and us staying the whole time which also translated into more money. For those of you that don’t know what “The apartment that the Rast’s stayed in” is, it is a very nice two bedroom apartment. It is modern and clean, has internet access, and is about a five minute walk from the orphanage. The only problem is that although we are allowed to stay here with children, Katya is forbidden to enter the apartment. Had I known this, I might have chosen a different place to stay because it is really going to suck to have to entertain Katya every day without being able to come here. I suppose we would have this same problem if we stayed at Constantine’s apartment and it would have been farther away. So, we should be happy…

We brought Katya here yesterday and played outside for a bit. I did let Katya come in to use the bathroom (sssshhhh! Don’t tell!) and I carried her around to show her the place – because her feet were actually very dirty – and got a “thumbs up” from her.

The apartment has two beds. One bed is semi-comfortable and the other bed is hard as a rock. I slept on it one night – or rather I should say that I laid on it, as there was very little sleeping going on because it was about as bad as sleeping on the cement floor - and got up the next day with a terrible back ache. So, the next night I slept in the other one and Alex slept on the hard one and I got a lot more rest. Alex says that the “hard as a rock bed” did not bother him so it looks like that is where he will be sleeping and my mom and I will get the nice bed :)

Everything here is very compact. My mom said today that this is like camping and it really is. The kitchen is so small and it reminds you of a kitchen you would find in a camping trailer that only has one pot, four forks, three bowls and coffee mugs. The only food in the kitchen seems to be rice so the owners either took all their food with them or really only eat rice.