Catching up!

It has been very difficult to keep up with pictures because we only had dial-up, which was very unreliable. Things have changed!!! We now have high speed internent PTL!!!!! Thank you for your patience. We should be able to be more consistent now. We are including some pictures from the weeks we missed.

This is the view out of our front door out to our front gate. We have a small enclosed yard where the kids are free to play in safety!

This is the view from our front gate to our front door.

Here you take your shoes off before you go in a home. Notice our lovely array of shoes outside our front door.

Josiah and Ruthy playing in the rain on one of the two days that is has rained in our time here.

Here is a picture of the streets here. Please notice the yellow van. These are our local transportation. Can you say sardines! You can get about 25-30 people in one of these, all SMOOSHED in together. Literally SMOOSHED! We have had lots of fun practicing being sardines! Imagine putting 30 people in a 15 passanger bus, and only 7 have seats, the rest are standing holding on for dear life. The nice perk is that people give their seats up to people with kids, so Rhesa usually has two kids in her lap, and Mikayla in the backpack carrier. Just imagine all the fun! You can't get any closer to your neighbors than in a "Marshutka".

Ruthy and Josiah at mommy's home school! Don't you love our school desks?

With the trauma of having to give our dogs away, we decided to get pets for the kids that can be flushed down the toilet in a moments notice! Here we are at a local bazar in the pet section that only opens on the weekends. Robert decided he needed to choose the guppies he wanted and the vendor agreed. The vendor is a deaf man, and Robert has been able to talk with him some and compare American Sign language to Russian Sign. There are many similarities. Remember the vendor and his daughter as we try to begin to build a relationship.
We got the tank all set up, and so far only two have gone down the drain!

I just love the local brush clean up. It is truly do it yourself! We cleaned our yard up, and asked our landlord what we needed to to with the brush. He said, "burn it" so we did! It got pretty high for a little, so Robert stood by with the water hose just in case! We truly doubt if the local fire department would show up to help!

Here is a local carseat! Not really, we bought a tub at the bazar for our laundry, and since kids don't use seats here, we thought it was "safer" for her to ride in a confined space. Check out her new hat!

Paul did say we had to become all things to all men, in this case Rhesa became an electrician! It works!

View from the outside entrance where Robert works.

View of the front entrance to the school.

The basketball/soccer field.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a local fellowship. It has been a blessing!