Home, Installment #1

I've been meaning to give you a virtual tour of our apartment. I'll have to do it room by room since it takes about 15 minutes to upload each picture.

I'll start with the kitchen. It's small but functional. Well, everything but the microwave is functional. The microwave heats things, but so slowly you might as well put them in a pan on the stove and get it done with. We'd throw the microwave out but don't know where to throw it.

The gas stove is interesting. The burners have two settings, hot and hotter. I end up holding the pans up off the burner quite a bit of the time so things don't burn. That works fine most of the time, except for things that need to cook slowly, like rice. The oven works well. I haven't tried baking because I don't have bakeware, but I hope to go to a new store tomorrow that should have some.

On top of the microwave next to the toaster is our hot pot. Steve and Julie had one of these in London. It heats water up pronto. We use it mostly for tea and also for dishwashing water, since the tap just has lukewarm water. I'd like to get one when we're back in the states. It's faster than a teakettle on the stove.

You can see Paul's water purifier on the counter. We don't use it for water to drink plain, but have found it useful for other purposes. The good and bad thing about it, depending on your perspective, is that it does a great job of purifying the water, but it doesn't change the taste. That's bad for us, because the water here tastes dirty. But if you were a local person and used to the taste of the water, it would be good, because your water would be clean but taste just like you're used to. This is just the kind of information that we had hoped to glean through practical experience with using it ourselves here.

Well, that's about it for the kitchen. I'm getting more and more comfortable cooking in it, though our meals tend to be simple. It's bigger than Amy's kitchen was in Madison, so I feel like I'm doing all right.