May 13, 2012 Happy Mother's Day/pics of the apartment

May 13, 2012

Today is Mother's Day and with the first breakfast we had in our flat Lewis made bacon and eggs. Also a card was sitting by my plate, very nice card great message, Lewis is so thoughtful and prepared ahead of time to have this card ready for this day before we left the United States.

The following pictures are of our flat. Some things familiar and some things very different.

This is the door we come through after walking up to the 4th floor, no elevator, this is very common but not to us. We will get in good shape. This picture shows the inside door, there is also an outside door and both are padded. Interesting huh?

Our kitchen is not a bad size. What you see on this side of the kitchen is all of the cupboard and drawer storage. Typically Russians go shopping everyday for food or maybe weekly so they don't need as much cupboard space I guess. The water gets very hot quickly, which is good, but you have to be aware. I did not get a picture taken of something interesting though, but if you look at the cupboard above the sink there is not a bottom to it. Inside this cupboard is two draining racks. When you wash dishes afterwards you rinse them and then place them in the rack in the cupboard and they "drip dry" into thesink. Also the water is not healthy to drink or to cook with so bottled water is always needed.

This is our little refrigerator/freezer. It goes about to our shoulders, but it works so no problem. Here is our table that we eat at and as you can see we do our computer work also. We did not choose the wall paper!!!

One view of the living room, unpacked suitcases all over.  If you look towards the back of the room you will see a little tv that was provided for us.  It is color, but all shows are in Russian and no connections for anything to be added to it for watching DVDs we brought with us. 

Here is one view of the living room. Of course luggage would not always be all over,but we have not unpacked yet. The door in the picture goes out to the entry/hallway.

Another unusual thing to us, the toilet is in a separate room from the sink and tub and in this situation the washing machine is also in the room with the sink and tub.  One thing we have learned is that it is almost unheard of to have a dryer with the washing machine.  When we have asked about it having a dryer we have to actually explain the mechanics of it and they have never heard of such an appliance.  Our dryer for clothes is now a clothes line on the balcony or a drying rack that we set up in a room and lay the clothes on it.  I did not get a picture of the sink and tub close up but the sink is right next to the tub and the faucet is turned to whichever you are using at the time, not a separate faucet for each.  Also, the water doesn't really have an odor, but when showering you may think you are very dirty because the water is a light brown.  Just don't look down!!!

Closer view of the washing machine.  It will hold the two towels that are on top, maybe a third towel.  We will be doing laundry daily instead of every other week while in this flat.

This is our bed, for the first two nights we used the bedding that was provided for us.  The bottom sheet was not a fitted sheet and it barely went across the top of the mattress, so with any movement we were sleeping on top of a bare mattress.  After two nights we bought a fitted sheet and sleep much better now.  Who picked out those crazy colored pillow cases?  Oh, it was Lewis......he is a great designer!!!

This is our closet and dresser.  We have been living out of our suitcases for so long this will be a nice change.

The following two pictures just make us laugh, but we are thankful that we thought ahead and brought our vitamins and supplements and prescriptions in a big quantity.