This is My Life - Part 1

The other day, my friend and I were talking about her upcoming trip home to Canada, and I asked her if she ever felt like she lives in two different worlds like I feel when I am at home (She's been down here for about 3 years). She told me that it makes sense that I would feel that way, as most of my family and friends will never get to come and visit me in this world. So, I got to thinking about how I can share more of my daily life with everyone back at home. I have decided to take a lot more pictures and try to explain as best as I can what my life is like down here.

So, today's segment of "This if My Life" is about our new apartment. Here are the pictures:

This is what you see when you enter the "front door". Yes, we have 2 doors. Our apartment is set up just like the ones on the 1st & 2nd floor - we're on the 3rd floor - but, they put a walkway through ours so that we have basically 2 apartments. The thinking of this is that if they ever need to have more apartments, they can always convert this one back to a 2 room apartment. You are looking at the kitchen/living room.

Another view of our kitchen/living room

This is the home school room - it is located through the doorway from the kitchen/living room. I am so estatic to have a place for all of our school stuff. I feel very spoiled to be able to have such a luxury. Our "back door" is located in this room, which faces the base.

This is the kids' bedroom, which is next to the homeschool room.

This is our room, which is next to the kitchen/living room.

We have 2 bathrooms - one next to the kid's bedroom and one next to ours.

The kids' bedroom is a popular place to hang out. Here are a few of their friends watching a movie this afternoon.

We are now accustomed to things here that I sometimes forget how different it is from my life back in Minnesota. The one thing that has been and continues to be a struggle for me is dishes. I don't mind that I don't have a dishwasher, but I find it to be such a tedious chore that I often have to think about the verse that says, "do all things as if working for the Lord". Let me explain - first, we do not have hot water in our kitchen faucet, which makes it difficult to get the dishes clean. So, I boil the water on the stove to clean the dishes. I also have a tub of bleach water that I put the clean dishes into in order to kill any parasites or amoebas (which I heard is debatable if bleach really kills amoebas or parasites, but I still do it). So, after a good soak, I move the dishes to a rack. On quite a few days, we run out of water, so dishes can pile up quickly. It just seems like a lot of work to me, but in reality, it really isn't. Most of our Mexican friends have to clean their dishes outside in a big cistern of water. So, I am thankful for indoor plumbing and a kitchen sink to clean my dishes in.

Next time on This is My Life - Life outside and around the base. :)