Q&A1: Our Apartment & A Typical Day

These are answers to questions Kim brought. If you have questions about our lives here, feel free to go here to ask them and we'll answer them in a future post.

Kim's questions: I would love to see pictures, if you can, of your apartment! It's hard to picture where you live. Also, what is a typical day like for you all?

OUR APARTMENT:
Here's a long picture of the big area of our apartment. The entry way is to the right, kitchen area, and Maranatha's room doors are straight ahead (you can't see the door to her room, it's just ahead of Doug to the right in this picture).

You can see a wall opening that's to the left of Doug. It is directly across from the front door... off that small area, the bathroom is straight ahead, our bedroom is to the left, and the boys' bedroom is to the right. We are blessed in that (as you can probably tell) we were given a brand new apartment when we moved here.









I did something fun in MeiMei's room: she has all different bright-colored daisies lining her ceiling for a fun border. And we found a floral painting that has the verse "I know the plans I have for you" (Jer 29:11) written on it. Her room is like a garden!













Here's our living room area, complete with our new Kazakh rug we just bought this weekend! We are so thrilled to have something warm under our feet instead of the frigid tile that is growing colder by the day. Now when she starts crawling, MeiMei will have soft carpet under her knees with some very visually-stimulating patterns! We have a table with a bench for the kids tucked away in one corner of the balcony area, and our computer desk is on the other end.



Our bathroom (this is not really a great picture, but it's the best I could get) has a small sink area that balloons out into a small room on the other end. In the more narrow section are the cabinets, sink, and washer (we don't have a dryer). This area generally stays dry. On the far end is the toilet, towel racks, and the shower head. We also keep a large plastic container on the floor full of water in case the water goes off (which happens semi-regularly). The shower head is open to the entire room, which means that everything in the bathroom gets mist on it anytime one of us takes a shower. Without the window, it would get very musty in there, because the water just runs all over everything. The window helps, but there are still several open drains, and with less-than-stellar plumbing and very fussy water pressure, rather than describing them all, I will let your imagination run wild with the smells that sometimes permeate our restroom. :)

Being on the 6th floor, we have really nice views of the mountains (mountains almost surround the city), and there is also an airfield nearby, so in regular intervals throughout the day, we can see airplanes flying relatively close to our apartment. That is an exciting thing for the boys.

A TYPICAL DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE CONNELL FAMILY:
On weekdays, Doug and I will each have classes throughout the morning, trading off watching the kids so the other can go to class or study. We have virtually all our meals together as a family, which is really nice. Eating in is great, and eating out is cheap. Our new househelper comes for about 2 hours to help with dishes and tidying up, which helps immensely and gives us time to study. In the afternoon, the kids take a nap and we either have more classtime or studytime. After dinner each night, we play, read, ride bikes, study, or just hang out as a family, and then before bedtime each night, we have a 10-15 minute "Bible time" when Doug teaches us from the Bible and then we sing a few songs and pray together as a family. The kids go to bed around 8, and then we have more study time or reading time or we have time together to hang out and watch a movie or whatever.

Thursdays I don't have any class and that's a day that I get together with a friend who wants to learn English (so we can each practice language together) and we go to the market together (kill two birds with one stone-language practice & shopping). Weekends are less structured. Sometimes we have people over, sometimes we go somewhere as a family (see here, here, and here), sometimes we just stay home and rest. I hope that gives you some ideas of what our average schedule/day is like.

Thanks for the questions, Kim! To anyone else who has questions, leave a comment HERE!