We've had some of this white stuff a few mornings in the past week:

 However it hasn't lasted more than a few hours and it's back to being gray outside.

We moved into an apartment last Saturday!

It is very nice to be in our own place with our own things even though we were very comfortable where we were staying. Our new place is very comfortable and checked all of the boxes on our list including having an oven which we've learned is rare. We also found out in the apartment hunting process that it's difficult to find an apartment that allows children! We saw a number of places that were nice and then were told afterwards that they weren't an option for us and a friend of ours called 3 or 4 different places and was told no because of the kids. Usually people complain about a no pets policy so it's been interesting dealing with a no kids policy.

This is the view from our kitchen window:

 At night the tower is lit up and is rather lovely.

It's been cold, -7 to -10 degrees Celcius. Now this temperature isn't bad if you're in a car driving places but when you have to walk most places it's pretty cold, especially when it's windy which seems to be every day.

On Monday at 4 pm we went to New Hope Centre to hang out with some youth. It's kind of a drop-in geared towards graduated orphans that was started by a few Americans. They have gone home for Christmas so Steve and I said we'd fill in. We went and played games, I made food for everyone, we tried to communicate, it was fun.  

We finally got internet in our apartment yesterday which is soooo nice!! No more trips to use public internet which we will not miss.

Steve is still attending Young Life on Friday evenings and will continue to do that. He is also going to an orphanage on Saturday with some people - the last, or one of the last Trek teams that was here went to this orphanage often and built some good relationships with the kids so hopefully those can be built on by the people that remain here.

 

Quirk of the Day:

We thought a fun little addition to the blog could be one interesting item every post. We already have 5 or 6 in stock (we see "interesting" things on a daily basis) but here's the first one!

We bought a hand blender from an electronics store and we got these as a free gift. And they are????

Our best guess (which turned out to be right) was that they are electric shoe warmers.