That's right. In the cold of our Christmas week, the battery in our car needed to be jumped THREE times. Once, our neighbor (who oddly, used to be friends with our landlords), another time, our kind friend Piotr came (he's in the photo above), and on CHRISTMAS DAY, our friend Paweł came to our rescue. Friends are wonderful.
Also because of the frosty weather, our water pipes froze and we were without plumbing for 3 days (guess which three!) but we got water back in the wee hours of this morning. It was both a shock and a welcome surprise to wake up to the sound of running water in our sink at 4:25am! We are also very glad to be able to flush our toilet (we'd been hauling water in and putting it in the back tank once our waste had built up "enough"... gross) and take SHOWERS in our own home. We went to our friends' house to shower the day before Christmas and we were very happy to feel clean.
We had a lovely Christmas feast in the Polish tradition. On Christmas Eve, we had Polish Barszcz (beet root soup) with homemade uszka (dumplings):
Our second coarse was broiled salmon with yummy, yummy potato cakes:
We started cooking the Bigos, however, we started cooking on Thursday in order for it to be ready for Christmas day.
It slow cooked on the wood stove all day Thursday and Friday, sat in the cold Friday evening, and was warmed up and ready to eat on Saturday. It. Was. SO. good.
We moved our dining table over to the opposite wall of this photo and put our work station on it (so it's covered in computers and things related to our "office") when we moved the bed downstairs, so we had to use our coffee table as our eating surface. It was fine though, and was sorta fun to sit on the floor together to eat.
On Christmas Day, we were invited to spend the evening with our friends (Paweł and Karina) for more food and merriment. It was fun to go there to chat and enjoy each others' company. All in all it was a great Christmas and we feel very blessed.
