Ups and Downs!

We’re slowly settling into life here in Kharkov, enjoying it all very much! On our way to language school, we took some pictures, so here they are. The leaves are really nice right now and we’re enjoying all the fall colors around us. Tuesday seemed to be the popular “rake leaves” day because we saw people everywhere raking leaves. There was even a machine (see picture below) that was out in the big park in the center picking up the leaves. It’s nice when the leaves are raked up because walking can be tricky if there are leaves everywhere. As you can see (in picture further down), their sidewalks aren’t always nice and smooth… there are plenty of drop offs to trip you up. The leaves do a good job of hiding those particularly from me. I seem to find the uneven surfaces all the time… and I walk with my eyes on the ground! I just laugh and then remember that snow isn’t going to be much better... I will then have to account for ice as well! :)

Last week I had a head cold which I kindly passed onto David. Oops! Just as I think we’re both finally about over that, David took a turn for the worse last night. The McDougles also got the bug, and they are currently all passing it around their house, so keep them in your prayers as they get well and also pray that we don’t pass our bug onto the Hindmans! The weather has been a pretty steady temperature of 40-50˚F, but we’re still waiting for the heaters to be turned on inside our apartments. That means most evenings my toes freeze, reminding me I need to bring the heater in whichever room I’m in and turn it on! :) The heater was definitely a good investment!

This week we’ve been having a bit of trouble with our electricity in our apartment. Since we moved in, we’ve kicked the breaker off several times just getting used to how much power we can have on at one time (for example you can only have one electric thing running in the kitchen at a time... I found that out the hard way when I turned the oven and our electric kettle on at the same time). But, when we go to flip the breaker back on, it sparks and sizzles a lot at us. David has started using a wooden spoon to do this now because it looks pretty scary. Well, Wednesday something popped while we were cooking in the kitchen and we can no longer get power to one wall of the kitchen. So, that means the oven is inoperable at the moment. Fortunately, we were able to buy matches and we can still use the stove! Hopefully that will be taken care of soon, but we’re not holding our breath for it to be done quickly. As of yesterday, the Hindmans had become our internet and oven resource! But then late Wednesday evening, the electricity went out in our whole apartment (we think for our neighbors as well)... and it's still out this morning. So, I made my little trip to the Hindmans to cook up a little something for David, bringing with me the stuff in our fridge that had a potential to go bad quickly. As of today, the Hindmans have become our internet, oven, fridge, and electrical resource! Please be praying we can get all of this sorted soon!
These two pictures are of our apartment building and the courtyard across from it. We live on the second floor.

Language classes are going well… we’ve had two full classes now and have learned quite a bit! It all seems very basic and is very basic, but we’ve begun! It’s pretty comical to hear us try to repeat what our language teacher says. Our tongues aren’t used to the letter combinations they use yet! We are happy with the teacher we found at the International House (she does speak pretty good English which is great), and we have another one trading off with her throughout the week. Should be good! Rob Hindman is also taking Russian with us, so that is nice to have an extra person in there learning at the same time!

Thanks again to you all for your prayers and encouragement. We’ve been so blessed by the comments you’ve been leaving on our blog, the emails you’ve sent, etc. etc. It keeps us excited knowing you’re excited about what we’re doing. Keep them coming!

These last two pictures are inside our apartment building and our apartment door. Hopefully we’ll get a video up soon of the inside of our apartment! Be watching for it!