Virgil

We’ve been here now about ten days and we’re sort of getting used to life here. First of all we’re in an apartment rather than a hotel. Though it feels a bit cramped – I’ve never lived in an apartment before, always a full home- compared to our house, I think the apartment was a better choice. The building is not much to look at from the outside. We’re one floor up a dingy, musty hallway where the floor is raw concrete and the hall window glass is partially broken. We didn’t think this was going to work out when we first walked up, but the apartment inside is rather nice, quite attractive actually and cozy. Each room has a very distinct and high quality wall paper, crown molding on the ceilings, and a floor which appears to be maple stained hardwood but is actually some sort of hard rubber product simulating wood. I’m not familiar with this product, but it does look real and it’s softer to walk on. It doesn’t hide the floor creaks, however; there are lots of annoying floor creaks. The rooms all have Persian print carpets.

There’s a full kitchen, (with a refrigerator, small stove, a microwave, and a tiny clothes washer machine) two bedrooms, a large living room, and a microscopic bathroom that has a shower stall. The shower stall is kind of dangerous to get in and out of. You have to climb into it, a step that is upper thigh high. I guess it’s not too bad climbing in, but climbing out with wet feet is just asking for an accident. The shower head snapped at the joint the first time I used it and we told them about it. The next day, after coming back from the baby house, I noticed the shower head had been replaced. The landlord must have just come in without our permission. I guess Soviet KGB habits die hard. But nothing seems to have been taken.

The beds are small, so small that we’ve decided to each take a bedroom. The mattresses frankly are not comfortable and the pillows are more throw pillows rather than sleeping pillows, at least on my bed; she may have a real pillow. I keep waking up with something achy, or a crick in the neck, a sore shoulder, a tender hip, a stiff back.

The living room is our key room, where we’ve got our internet connection, a DSL line to the phone, and therefore the laptop is on the coffee table. For some reason Pussnboots's computer failed to boot up after our flight out here, so only my computer is hooked up. The coffee table also has all our useless Russian translation books scattered on it for quick reference, as well as notepads, journals, pens and pencils, map, books, DVDs, chewing gum, sunglasses, eye glass cases, remote controls, a half empty bottle of water, snack wrappers, and crumpled up tissues. We’re not exactly keeping the living room neat. The living room has a couch and two smaller couches – smaller than a two person love seat but larger than a single arm chair. All three couches have this concave shape to them and really firm material. They look oriental. The living room does have an air conditioner. It’s surprisingly hot here in Shymkent, an arid California-esk type of climate. There’s one drawback to the air conditioner: it’s excessively noisy, humming like a grinding machine, after a while drilling into the brain like a Jack Hammer. So it only stays on for a limited time.

We have a nice flat screened TV on a stately stand. The TV stations are all in Russian, not a single one in English. We were told that CNN would be on in English, but we have not found it, no matter how many times we roll up the dial. What’s funny is that many of the TV shows are actually American shows but dubbed over. The native TV sitcoms appear to be just as dumb as our American ones. There is Discovery channel, National Geographic channel, and Animal Planet channel, all of course dubbed over. There seems to be a large number of nature shows. Funny how one travels half way round the world to see a nature show on Yellowstone Park wildlife. What I truly find remarkable is that there is a sports channel that has baseball games on. And they are overdubbed in Russian. I couldn’t believe I was watching a NY Mets/NY Yankee game. That’s a big game back home. Do Russians and Kazaks actually watch and appreciate baseball? I wish I could understand the announcer. I wonder how you say curveball in Russian or home run or even something basic as a strike.

We shopped at the supermarket and try to eat two of the three meals in the apartment. We always have breakfast here. We’ll make eggs, or I’ll have toast with some local wild berry jam, and I’ll have a yogurt. Yogurt is big out here and delicious. pussnboots will usually have a hot cereal. There’s no coffee pot, so I’ll have tea with breakfast. You would think I would drink some really great local tea, but all the local teas are unbagged, and I have no means of brewing it. I wound up getting Lipton Green tea with lemon, and it’s really good. I’ve never seen this back home. We’ve make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch or just have cold cut sandwich. For dinner we’ve cooked beans and rice or pasta. The can opener that came with the apartment didn’t work so we had a heck of a time trying to open a can of beans. Ultimately we had to use a bottle opener and a pocket knife, punching around the can. It feels like we’re living off the land. But mostly we eat out for dinner.

Ok, here are some pictures of the place. First the kitchen.



Then the bathroom in two pictures because it was so small to get the entire thing:




This is the hallway leading to the living room:



The living room:



And the two bedrooms:





I bet you can guess which is hers and which is mine.

Finally the obstructed view we have from our living room window:



And pussnboots sitting in the kitchen trying to learn Russian: