Our apartment in Kharkov...

Sue, this is for you.  I know you are knee deep in wedding flowers but if you ever come up for a breather, maybe you will enjoy this post....We have a great, big apartment here in Kharkov.  As you can tell from the pics it's in a very old building.  Apparently when they renovate and fix up apartments in Ukraine, maintaining and fixing up the front door and hallway is an afterthought...when we first stepped in the front door we really wondered what we were getting into!  After hauling our luggage up 3 flights of stairs we soon found out.  This is quite a place!  Picture yourself stepping back in time to the Soviet Union, 1950's era, post-war opulence mixed with 80's and 90's updating, and you will know you are at our place! (actually, there wasn't much left of Kharkov after the war so probably not much opulence, but it seemed a good descriptive word) It's quite a place - crystal chandeliers, faded satin curtains, ornate woodwork, coffered ceilings, dated (but elegant) wall paper, hardwood parquet floors, and of course the biggest, most ostentatious bed you can imagine - we have all dubbed it the Czars' Bed. There are 3 bedrooms -so there is plenty of room to share our place with our facilitator when she is in town with us.  The bathroom is bigger than any of mine at home and has a huge tub - can't wait to see Vika and Nastya swimming in it! Best of all there is a clothes washer! That is such a blessing. The twins have their own room with an attached balcony with a clothes line for drying the laundry.  There is a small kitchen with a refrigerator and great little gas stove.  I have had to buy a decent frying pan, spatula, peeler and cutting board but that is all.  We are eating most of our meals here to cut back on expenses.  There are numerous small markets covering our neighborhood and there is a large supermarket about 20 minutes walk. We can get just about anything we need there.  The biggest challenge is water.  We have been advised to not drink, cook, or brush our teeth with the tap water.  And with 4 people you go through a lot of water! So, obtaining water is a daily event. Shopping for food is amusing when you can't read anything.  We try to stick with the obvious fruit, bread, cheese, meat, milk, cookies, everything else we look at the pictures and guess!  Tonight I made meatballs with some kind of spice that looked like vegetable seasoning or something. We survived it.

Ok, enough  boring info, here's a few pics...

 

Me, pretending to make borsch... 

Seriously, I know how to cook soup (maybe not borsch!)at home in my own kitchen. But here it is a different story. I can't read the labels on any spice or herb packets so I try to go by the pictures.  I will have to figure it out soon, or see if someone sells canned soup.  At the orphanage, the girls have soup and bread every single day for lunch. And have probably had that every single day for their entire lives.

 

Boys, looking out the kitchen window...

One very large tub, waiting for 2 little girls!!!...

(the tub is full of water as we were told one day last week, we might lose water. We needed to have water on hand for flushing toilets.  Our facilitator told us, "These things happen in Ukraine." It never did, so far.

 

The boys room...

"Bed Wars"

 

Looking out the twins window...

(this city is sooo green, there are trees and flowers and little gardens tucked everywhere!)

 

And of course, last but not least...The Czars' Bed.

Sorry for the silliness of this post. :)