Our visit to Ukraine, first installment of pictures

I think I can now say we're in Ukraine.  :)  In fact, we are in the great city of Kiev.  Tomorrow, we leave to go to Seth's region, so today, before and after our SDA appt, we walked around and saw the beauty and culture surrounding this city.  It's old.  It's not uncommon for our driver to point to a building and say it's 1,000 years old.  1,000 years.  The US hasn't even been a country that long, and they have buildings still standing from that era.  It's a city ripe with history and I love that!  I cannot get enough of people watching.  It's an interesting culture.  Everyone drinks and smokes.  We stick out like a sore thumb.  The buildings are old style soviet union block housing.  Everyone lives in apartments.  We have yet to see a house.  The outside and inside of the apartment complexes are usually run down, decaying.  But the inside of each apartment is owned by a tenant and can be much nicer.  Ours is a modest apartment.  It's served our needs. 

This is a view of the outside of our apartment:

The hall and elevators:

Our front door:

Our living room/ bedroom/office

Our kitchen:

We have a washer in the bathroom.  Yes, you read that right.  Here is our dryer: 

This is very common.  We see clothes lines drying all over town.  Lots and lots of towels and sheets. 

These next three are pics of our view from our window:

Coming up next, some of the culture, magnificent cathedrals and the SDA building.