Russia Part II

As I mentioned before, in June I went to Russia for two weeks. Here's part two of my adventures there.

We got to enjoy this delicious bruschetta that one of my co-workers made! Sooo good. Everything in Russia tasted fresher.

 This was a dinner we had one night at our hotel. We made it in the room and it was pretty tasty!

This is khachapuri! The most amazing thing ever! It's basically Russian cheesy bread. It has cheese on the top and cheese on the inside and it tastes amazing...

 Everywhere we ate, I pretty much always got a greek salad. My co-worker said I was going to turn into a greek salad, haha. They were so good and fresh!

Here I am in front of Christ the Savior church. It was so beautiful and I was so excited to see it.

The restaurants we ate at always looked so fancy!

Yep, that's a pineapple with rice in it. Haha. It was really good rice!

Oh yeah, we passed by the Star Wars bar, haha! I had to take a picture of it.

One day at work, the Russians laid out this huge spread for us to snack on. It was so good! They also had fresh juice, which was delicious.

We ate at Mcdonald's in downtown Moscow and it was really nice! They had french fries, but they also had potato wedges. I got 2 orders of potato wedges and they were so good!

We also got ice cream cones afterward, they were only 25 rubles - that's less than a dollar! :)

We ate at an American-style diner there and got breakfast one day and it was so good. I pretty much loved everything I ate in Moscow.

I thought this ship was pretty cool.

This was the party boat for sure! As it passed by it was playing loud, dance music and there were groups of people dancing all throughout it. I was jealous! I wanted to get on the party boat.

There were locks all over this bridge and apparently couples put them on and throw the keys in the river.

Walking down the street one day, this woman came up to us and gave us these free, cactus-lime drinks. I liked it, but it was sooooo sugary!!

And here's the view from my room - at 10:30 pm!! :)

Gallery Wall

Back in July I went to Atlanta to visit some friends and while I was there, I went to Ikea! My main purpose was to buy some picture frames because they are such great prices. I knew I wanted a bunch to make a gallery wall in the living room. I got some pictures printed out at Walgreen and the rest of the art I ripped out of magazines (who can complain about free? haha).

I started out by laying out frames on the ground to see what I liked.

After tweaking it a little, I started hanging pictures on the wall. I'm am so not a perfectionist and so I just guesstimated. I actually didn't have to re-hang anything - maybe that also has something to do with me not being a perfectionist, haha.

After hanging what I had laid out so far, I realized I didn't have enough frames on the wall so I just went to town adding more. Again, I winged it and it ended up working out like I wanted.

I really, really love how it turned out! I also think it will be fun changing out the pictures and art over time. :)

New Appliances

 
I am so so happy!! Because now my appliances all match. :) Whoop whoop! After saving up for a while, I finally got around to getting a new stove and dishwasher. The stove and dishwasher that came with the house were black and the dishwasher was particularly horrible.

Here's the old stove - I couldn't find one of the awful dishwasher.

Check out my new and improved kitchen!

I bought the stove and dishwasher from Lowes (gotta love free next-day shipping), but I got them price-matched from Best Buy prices. If you get an appliance at Lowes price-matched, they give you an extra 10% off that price (well at least at my Lowes). I was very pleased with the final prices. Very reasonable.

The new appliances work so much better than the old ones! I love them.

If you need me, I'll be here staring at my "new" kitchen. :)

Oh Yeah, I went to Russia

Back in June I went to Russia for 2 whole weeks for work. It was my first trip out of the country and quite an experience!! :) I have never been on a flight that long. It was nine and a half hours to get across the pond and when we arrived I was so ready to get off that plane!

We were picked up at the airport (yeah, we were not driving over there...) and I snapped this picture as we drove away. I thought the airport looked really cool and modern.

Look to the left of this picture - yep! That's Ikea! In Moscow, Russia. :)

These kinds of apartment buildings were everywhere. They were all this big and so colorful.

This was my room at the hotel we stayed at.

Yep, I had a kitchen too. It was pretty awesome.

The view from my room.

St. Basil's Cathedral! Pretty cool, huh? :)

This building is a mall! Crazy, huh?

My dinner one night. Just kidding, but isn't that the fanciest way to bring a customer ice ever?

Yummy, yummy pizza.

One of our colleagues made us macarons!! :) They were the most delicious things ever.

One of the restaraunts we went to had the napkins in these containers and I thought they looked really cool.

One day when I was coming back to my room, I saw this sign on the door next to mine. It says, "Bankrupts Anonymous." I thought that was very strange. Okay, so I'm in Russia and there's a group of English-speaking Americans gathered in a room in this hotel to have a meeting about bankruptcy. Hmmm.... Ok.

I have more pics that I haven't even gone through yet so I have more to share later, but I wanted to give a glimpse into my trip! :)