Neighbors

I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet but our landlords happen to live right next door to us. Their names are Zbigniew and Elzbieta - I am sure I will never figure out how to pronounce that! We live on a corner so really they are the only people we see on a day-to-day basis. There is a museum on the other side of our house, I have yet to figure out that kind of museum it is but every now and then people are outside having a cook-out or some kids are running around chasing a soccer ball. I kind of like that no one lives there because our backyards are only separated by an ugly green wire fence so we would have to look at them every time we were out back. I just translated the name when I uploaded the picture and it's the Estreicherow Family Museum of Culture and Recovery of Losses...?

Museum - it looks like a normal house, I took this picture so I could translate the sign

Ava and Daddy at Gospoda

Fortunately (or unfortunately), the landlords don't speak a word of English so we just wave to each other or the kids yell 'dzien dobry!'and that's about it. They have a daughter in her 30's who speaks fairly good English so she is the one I deal with mostly with house stuff, or Michal the relocation guy (but he always take a day or two to get back to me and I don't like waiting). We've had a decent amount of 'issues' since moving in so I have to say it's been handy that they live right next to us so they can be over in 5 minutes - like when the security alarm guy who barely speaks English is here and asking me a million questions about the alarm that I can't answer.  Also the other day the fuse blew the kitchen in the middle of the night, I switched it back on in the morning but it went off again in the afternoon and then again during the next night and I couldn't figure out what was causing it. Michal called the landlords and arranged to have an electrician at the house but he didn't speak English and I was out with the kids so the landlords let themselves in and dealt with it all that afternoon. Unfortunately by the time it got fixed (the dishwasher was shorting it out), it was about 6pm so I decided to toss everything inside the fridge. What a PITA, because this required an unexpected outing to the grocery store to replace everything I had just bought. Since we had no food and no electricity to cook with, we had to go out to eat that night. It was late so instead of going into city center we decided to try out the restaurant up the road that a few people have told us about - I knew they didn't really have a kids menu, but I feel like it's time to start forcing the kids to eat real food while we are out! Jack didn't eat much of his chicken but we ordered some turkey breast for Ava and she gobbled it all up. Mike and I enjoyed ours too, I have eaten their pierogies before and they were delicious but I didn't order them this time since they are not a part of our eating program : )

So back to the landlords. I have to say we have been highly entertained by the guy's outfits - he showed up to help mount our TV to the wall and he was sporting some sweet jean short shorts and a tank top - we could not stop giggling to ourselves so Ava picked up on this and grabbed my phone to take a picture. He showed up a few days later in even shorter shorts - after he left our house Ava said he took his shirt off to do some gardening but fortunately she didn't take a photo of that! She occasionally spies at him through the fence and one day she came running over to tell me she saw him wearing girl's underwear, lol!!! I think they were just even shorter shorts if that is even possible. Anyway, they are a nice couple and seem to genuinely want to make sure we enjoy our stay in the house. They brought us over a homemade rhubarb dessert the day we moved in and seem to be really friendly so hopefully it won't be too bad living next to them all the time....