New Apartment day and more sights

So today we moved to a new apartment.  It is a little further away from the center of the city but way cheaper and it is still close to a lot of the central areas here in Kiev. And walking anywhere is fairly easy although we got a little crossed up on our first excursion out to meet our new friends Matt and Tricia here in town.  But we easily found our way back and got to where we needed to be today. Here are a few pictures of our place.

So it is quite a bit smaller than our old place but more than enough space for the next week till we can head to Donest'k.  And we have a washing machine now which is great as we were running a little low on clothes.  The rest of our day was spent hanging out with our friends and learning how to ride the subway which is quite cool but takes a little getting used to.  But I think I have it down now so we can move around a little easier.  But that is thanks to Matt and all of his local knowledge of the city and his ability so speak and read russian.  He has lived in Ukraine for seven years so that helps.  They are great people and we are very fortunate to have met them.  Yesterday we went to the Pechers'ka Lavra which is a very large Monastery.  Pechera means cave in and Lavra is the name given to the largest monastery in the Eastern Orthodox faith.

It was established in 1051 and it carries the name cave because there were  caves dug underneath the monastery used to burry the monks.  The climate turned them into mummies and they are very well preserved.  It a place that you can visit, although finding the entrance is very challenging as all the signs are written in cyrillic and there was no one around that we could speak with.  But we found it and bought a candle and went down there.  It is interesting to see all this very small monks with just their feet uncovered with shoes on and all of the people down there praying with the monks.  It is a beautiful set of buildings but we were only able to take pictures in a few places as photography is very limited there.  But it was great.  We ate some great pizza here too some of the best I have ever had and overall we have been having a great time counting down the days until we can go pick up our son.  Hope all is well with all of you and we will talk to you soon.