More with Less...

    The latter half of our first 24 hours have definitely been a bit of an adventure.  |Our first apartment was hot and small but we had fairly consistent internet and discovered halfway through the day that we did actually have a landline phone.  Oh Joy!  We called a few people, Skyped Ben and hung out.  We were pretty content in that apartment.  We still needed a cell phone and hadn't contacted any RR people, but we were comfortable.
     At about 4:00 we received a phone call.  We had to move.  The landlord for some reason or another wanted to move us to a bigger apartment in another building.
     "Bigger is not always better" is definitely true... yes we moved to a bigger apartment but we now had no fan, (massive loss), no DVD player, no phone and.... most importantly.... no internet access.  (There was a phone, DVD player and an internet connection but none worked).  We wanted to get together with other RR families but since we couldn't call them and had no idea where we were or where they were - well... welcome to life in a foreign country!!
     So after unpacking our bags in our new bigger but not better apartment, we set out to explore and find something to eat.  After wandering a bit we found free WiFi and decided to stop and see if anyone had contacted us from RR.  Hurrah!  We had a Facebook message that a couple of RR people were meeting at such and such a place.  OKAY... where might that be ??  What a total hoot!
     Rob and Elijah took up the challenge and went looking for the landmarks given.  Rob has gotten really good at figuring out how to read the signs.  (For those who know him - that should not come as a surprise).  The written language here (though it looks very strange) is phonics based and if you can learn the sounds for the letters, you can occasionally figure out what the sign says.  Unbelievably, based on this new-found skill, they found them!
     We spent a nice hour talking to the Lorraines (adopting Oksana) and Sherry White (adopting Peyton, Jessa and Amelia).  Sherry's husband left a few days ago after they had court.  We've been following both their blogs for some time so it was a definitely a blessing to talk with them!  They gave us some definite help in figuring out where we could shop and eat and insight into what to expect tomorrow.  We ate dinner at TGIFridays (definitely expensive) and headed home to our internet-less, DVD-less, phone-less and TERRIBLY HOT apartment.