Goodbye 102

(When I have my camera working, I'll update these last posts with pictures. For now, I'm going count myself as fortunate to be updating!) Today is our last day in Rosinka 102. This is the home that provided us an escape route from the armpit apartment on Tverskaya. Those early days of 800 square feet, 1 bathroom, 2 bedrooms, suitcases everywhere and huddling around the computer to watch "Everwood" are still not the happiest memories. I remember that first night in Rosinka, sleeping on mattresses on the floor with borrowed sheets and blankets feeling so relieved to be away from the cigarette smoke fumes, malfunctioning air conditioning and matchbox sized kitchen. This has been a great home for my family. In this house, I figured out how to cook using what I could buy at my Russian grocery store, we've had friends visit from the US--Wells Brimhall, the Densleys, Allison Packham--and had our dear friends the Coxes camp out at various junctures. This has been a happy place for us and I was prepared to spend our 3-4 years in Russia here. However, the changing real estate market and the shrinking expat population opened up an opportunity for us to move to a larger home at a significantly lower price. We will spend our next two years in Russia in Rosinka 1105. Would it have been easier to move near the school and avoid the nightmare of traffic on Volokolmoskoe Schosse? Yes. But there were about 500 complications that are too annoying and too Russian to explain. Suffice it to say, we feel like this is the right place for our family to spend the next two years. Today is not going to be easy. It is about 40 degrees outside, windy and rainy. I have a houseful of boxes that need to be moved to 1105 before the movers come tomorrow to move the furniture. A lot of our friends are traveling for the Anglo-American School holiday so we are going to be putting in a lot of sweat equity today with a little help, but not as much as we would on another weekend. I'm looking forward to coming out on the other side. We'll get through it. We always do. We have done much harder, more complicated moves than this. I am a little sentimental about leaving our first "home" in Moscow, but I'm eager to take on a new stage of life too. See you in another life, Brother.