Living in limbo

It's been a rough few weeks...after much debate, we (temporarily) moved into another apartment. As many of you know or have heard, our bathroom has issues. I'm not going to lie, I cried the first day we got here when I saw the bathrooms. Nothing was actually wrong with them, they were just a little different than I had pictured. Old tiles, 50's green (like an old Chevy wagon), then another green for patching broken ones, and a shotty job with larger, newer tiles on the floor that didn't quite make it to the wall on the back and one side and had piles of "gunk". It's no wonder that pictures of our apartment didn't include the bathroom. Over the past few months we've grown fond of our cozy little apartment, except for the hazard zone. Right before Rawly was born water started dripping from the pipes near the toilet. And that crevice between the floor and wall, well it would be wet in the morning and dry up during the day. There arose a damp icky smell that we tried to mask with candles. It became habitual to take a deep breath, run in, relieve yourself, wash your hands, and escape as quickly as possible. The pipe was fixed in December, but when we came back from Italy, it began leaking again. Then the hot water went out. At first we thought, well, they must be fixing the leak. But it never came on again.
A week they said. Fair enough, our bathroom was to be remodeled; tiles taken off the wall, bleached, moldy grout removed, etc. The way Ukrainian time goes, I figured on at least two weeks (it's kind of like the "manana" of Latin culture.) Week one passed; week two brought the news that if the hot water was fixed, then they would go ahead with renovations--as they "Europeanized" our bathroom. Apparently Europeanizing involves enclosing all visible water pipes--an added plus.
Then just this last Thursday we were told, "The guys are there to work, can you make sure everything is out and ready, now?" It was the middle of the day, and we had classes to teach, so I went over after school. The guys had begun and as an added bonus they were also tearing apart our shower bathroom! (Most Ukrainian apartments have a toilet room and a separate bathroom.) So it had been two weeks. Two weeks to begin, not finish! We'd moved clothes and food to the new apartment, back to the old one, then to the new one. Living between the two places has proved to be difficult. They taped off our bedrooms so that they don't get dusty, but the kitchen and living room are a different story as they've become the storing place for all of the tiles. We go on vacation next week and they are supposed to be done by the 26th--let's hope so! Then we'll be back to our home sweet Ukrainian home!!!