You've probably heard that we have to move to another apartment. Sunday some people looked at this apartment; Tuesday they came back to tell us that they had bought it. They gave us 7-10 days to be out. (Yes, it's legal. That's just kind of the way things work here. We've always had pretty good experiences with renting, but we've seen stuff like this happen to so many others!)
The next day Will went out and found us another place to rent. Got that? The next day! It's really unbelievable in a city of this size and with the situation here. I don't know when we'll move into it. Soon. Please be praying for us as we pack up and move.
And pray for all of our hearts, too, please. Obviously, leaving the nice apartment that we have enjoyed so much is not the end of the world. We knew this day would come. But it's not easy. It seems like really bad timing. Our children aren't happy about it either.
I was encouraging myself by looking back at photos of other apartments that we've lived in and reading old blog posts. (
This one is fun. They were so little last time we moved!) I'm going to repost and add a little to another old one below.
This is originally from 2010:
As you may know, we're moving soon! I've been thinking a lot about how God has provided housing for us over the years. Since I don't have photos of our new apartment or details about it yet, I'll tell you about the apartments we've lived in before.
February-June 2001; Charlotte, NC; $500 a month. (I'm including the prices. That might be too much info, but the trend of bigger and cheaper is fun to follow.) We rented the upstairs of a garage, just a few blocks from Will's parents. The apartment was tiny, and it had lots of character. I remember standing there and noticing that the floor leaned one way, the window sill another, the counter yet another, and the angle of the ceiling didn't match any of the others. It swayed in the wind of a strong storm. We could look down on the tiny patch of yard of the duplex behind us and watch their one pet chicken. . . right in the middle of Charlotte!
September 2001-February 2004; Moscow; $300. This apartment was a two-room* in very bad condition. It was on the sixth floor of a nine-story building. Before we lived there, it had been used as some kind of office and workshop. We had no money to fix it up, so we did a lot of creative covering and rigging things. Furniture was a strange mix of the office stuff left there, what Will found in the trash and even a loveseat that he built himself. It was a great place to live! Jaan was born there.
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| Our Moscow apartment building |
February 2004-May 2007; Kovrov; whatever the landlord could squeeze out of us! (I can't remember what we were officially supposed to be paying him. I'll have to ask Will. It did change often.) This was my favorite apartment, even though it was packed with clutter and the roof leaked.
It was also two rooms, but the layout was really great. The kitchen was big, and it just felt big overall. This apartment is where Raia was born. When the landlord got tired of FSB bothering him about us, and we also couldn't take his daughter, we had to move out.
May 2007-February 2008; Kovrov; 2000 rubles? When we had to move, our neighbors found us a place on the first floor of the same building. It was smaller, and we didn't really get to make it feel like home, but it was nice. And Asya was born there.
May 2008-April 2010; Dneprorudnoe; 1000 hrivni (that's $126 at the moment) + utilities. Three rooms for the first time! Although the size was about the same as my favorite apartment, it's been nice to have separate rooms. We've done a lot to make this apartment feel like home, and our friends the Sullivans really worked hard to make it look nice! Now our landlady's son wants to live here, so we have to move on.
April 2010-October 2012; Dneprorudnoe; 1200 hrivni, utilities included. Four rooms! Details will have to come later, though. There's a map below that shows both our old (blue dot) and new (yellow dot) buildings.... [2012 update: This apartment has been wonderful! Probably the best physical feature is the open layout. The owners had taken out several walls, which opened everything up in a way that I had only dreamed about before. We have also really gotten to know our neighbors well. Especially recently the babushki here have become so complementary about our family that I am embarrassed and also confused: they're supposed to tell me what I'm doing wrong, not how wonderful they think we are! We'll miss them. Oh, and I have to add the note like what I have on three other apartments above: Bogdan was born in this one.]
October 2012-?; Dneprorudnoe, over by the church, if you want a more specific location and are familiar with the city; 1400 hrivni, utilities included. Back down to three rooms. (We're breaking our trend.
) And, like I said the last time I wrote something like this, I guess details will have to come later.
*In Russian we say the number of rooms, not just bedrooms like in English. So, a Russian two-room is like an American one-bedroom. I'm using the Russian way here.
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