Our Apartment

We stayed in on Wednesday. For those of you who know Nathan well, you know that it was like a new age form of torture to keep him cooped up in a city with so much sightseeing to do. We had the rest of our luggage delivered to our apartment mid' day. This is a photo of our living / dining room.

This is the photo of the anaconda skin that runs the length of the hallway wall. Interesting.

We've spent every bit of spare time we have trying to get some clothes cleaned. It's quite a process. The washer is about the size of a paint can, has a spring loaded opener inside and is Italian. We don't speak Italian. The dryer isn't vented, requires us to string it's electrical cord across the hallway, is the size of four paint cans and is German. We don't speak German.

When you open the dryer a huge cloud of steam provides a nice sauna opportunity to whoever is lucky enough to open the door. Then, you feel inside for the damp clothes and start the process again. The dryer seems to indicate a 37 minute cycle but after two days we can absolutely say that it doesn't last 37 minutes. So, that makes us wonder what kind of time the 37 represents. The cycle is much shorter than 37 minutes more like 10 minutes. This provides lots of exercise as we are constantly navigating down the long hall from the living room to check on the dryer status which is almost always - dryer off and wet clothes inside. If you drive down our Moscow street and see random undies hanging off our balcony, you'll understand that our dryer was finally fired. I brought some detergent, bleach and dryer sheets but we're just kind of making things up as we go. The clothes look cleaner than when we started so I guess it's progress.
This is a photo of the odd religious dude that is backlit in our living room. I believe that he is a famous Russian saint and will work to get his name from Svetalana. He watches us as we watch DVDs, drink our pivas and update our blog. Perhaps he will bring us good luck on the rest of our stay.

We walked down the street on Wednesday in search of dinner. We found a lovely restaurant (we felt air conditioning for the first time since Lake Villa!) called Simple Pleasures. The food was excellent and reminded us that eventually we will get back home. It was a celebratory dinner for being granted our petition to adopt Sasha. (Thanks JP for the treat!)

We've found a very small grocery store that mainly supplies beer and not much else. Nathan found a McDonald's to bring back for lunch since we were stranded here awaiting the arrival of our luggage. It's the first time I've eaten McDonald's in forever. The Russians must enjoy more 'goop' than we do as it was loaded down with sauce making it very challenging to eat.


This is Mom and I getting ready to get on the elevator. At night, there is only a faint light so you ascend in darkness. Nice.

Our apartment security could only be rivaled by Fort Knox. We have a code to get into the building. We live on the third floor. We have a door that leads to ours and another apartment. It has three locks with two different keys that look like they date back to the the Stalin era. We then have another lock on our door and a padded leather strange door (not sure what it's purpose is) that isn't locked after that. Wow ... what would require this kind of security?? Here are some photos of us 'breaking into' our apartment. It requires that each of us have a special skill for each special key. We're always anxious as this might be the day where we won't be able to get the locks to turn.