Well, my first impressions of site were a little rough. But after a week of settling in and some intense cleaning and scrubbing and some retail therapy, I am starting to feel more at home. I think the most awesome thing about first impressions is that when we rolled up to my new Soviet block-style apartment complex the graffiti that was sprayed near my door said 'Mothe Fuker'... Classe (that means awesome in Russian). I saw that and I instantly thought... wow, I am home.
So anyhow, the front door to my building is broken and open. We climbed some dank concrete stairs up to the third floor and my door looked pretty non-descript. What's kind of cool is that I have 2 doors. A nice wood outside door with a pretty sturdy lock, then an inside door that is padded with a peep hole. I'm not sure why the peep hole is not on the outside door, but 'Eta Geezn' (that's life). My apartment is big, but let's just say it needed a LOT of work for me to feel comfortable. (When I say a lot, I am not exaggerating when I say that I scrubbed for a minimum of 15 hours my first weekend there).
The kitchen was cute, but dirty, and I didn't have a fridge so that would be a problem. I have a 'pantry' which I am choosing to not use for anything, but storage of my cleaning supplies and my Peace Corps issued space heater. It's dark and dank and potentially could be used as a sort of fridge if it wasn't covered in mold on the inside. This is a cleaning project I am choosing to NOT undertake. That door will stay closed. I hope my space heater doesn't get too scared and lonely in there.
My main room is rather large. I have a divan (probably from the 1950s if I am guessing correctly from the fabric pattern) that pulls out into a bed. This seems to be pretty standard from what I have experienced in my little village, although, I was lucky enough to have the master-suite in Starry Belous so I had a real bed. I sat on the divan and basically thought I was going to fall through the middle, good thing I didn't plop down on one of the supports... I think I might have broken my tailbone if that was the case, but thankfully it wasn't. (I am seeing what I can do about buying a new bed, or at least a new mattress). Everytime I move, the bed creaks really loudly and I think I wake myself up because I haven't been sleeping well at all. But, anyhow the room is nice and big and I have a really beautiful wall length armoir/cabinet thing for storage. I have been offered a tv, which I think I am going to take them up on since it might help with my Russian studies. I also have a kind of rickety, slanted balcony which is great for air flow and for hanging wet clothes after I wash them. And, AND key is that all of my windows are brand new. The windows both on the balcony and separating the balcony from the apartment are high-tech. I can open them like I would open a door to the side, or I can switch the handle and have them cracked open at the top. It's pretty cool. Same for the kitchen, all new and freshly installed with some weird ugly foam stuff that I am choosing to think is NOT asbestos... but may in fact be. I will do my best not to lick it or nuzzle my nose against it on cold days.
The HUGE sore point is the bathroom. The wallpaper is hanging off the walls and the ceiling and the toilet was totally nasty. When I got there the toilet seat was on the floor and the toilet was filthy and seatless. Not too inviting to someone who just spent a few hours in a car and had to go. The tub is big, but has a huge rust spot along the middle. My way around this has been to wear flip flops in the tub and to buy a huge plastic laundry basin and stand in it... when I take my bucket showers... (I don't have hot water so I have to boil the kettle on the stove and then take the precarious walk to the bathroom with a heavy scalding hot kettle then dump it into my bucket and mix with cold water. I'm not sure if I am doing the bucket shower correctly, but I have cut the top off of one of my plastic water bottles, stand in the laundry basin, and then use the water bottle to dump warm water over myself... This has gotten kind of old already and it's only been a week, but apparently this is a normal thing to do here so I have to get over my spoiled self and make it work... and by making it work, I am buying a hot water boiler and having a shower nozzle that works installed... eta geezn).
I think possibly my two favorite parts about the bathroom were in describing two things to John and then listening to him gagging over the phone at my bathroom experience. Number 1, the toilet seat that I mentioned... that was on the floor. I picked it up to check it out since I figured it would be better to sit on that with toilet paper on it than to hover over my own toilet... It was one of those soft cushy toilet seats. It was filthy and some of the foam was exposed in a few places. I pretty much immediately demanded that my director take me somewhere to buy a new toilet seat. According to John, a cushy padded toilet seat is one of the nastiest things that can be in a bathroom... a dirty one with holes in the seat being the worst. Number 2, I told John that I pulled about 8 inches of hairy slime from the drain in tub, all the while gagging myself as I dropped it in the toilet and almost tossed my cookies.
After giving me a short rest and then taking me to my new office and shopping for a few household items - like a new toilet seat and a plastic laundry basin, my counterpart and director left me alone for the weekend to get settled and to unpack. This turned out to be really good since my new apartment required a minimum of 15 hours of intense scrubbing for me to feel comfortable. My new office, however, is AWESOME. The organization that I am working for is a governmental organization and the regional center hub that deals with children and youth that are HIV-positive. They do HIV education, training and various types of therapy. It seems like it will be a very interesting experience.
The office building is located on a hospital campus that is in the forest on the outskirts of town (40 minute walk - that's nothing for a New Yorker). The setting is beautiful, although there is a small building across from my office that sells coffins... strange, I'm not sure what that's all about, but hopefully I will find out. The office is new. Beautiful kitchen, bathroom with a shower and a hot water boiler, an office area, a therapy room/training room and a children's therapy room with books, toys, games and art supplies. And we have resident chinchillas, a hamster and fish to keep things interesting. I have befriended one of the chinchillas. She squeaks at me when I walk by, because she knows that I am good for a belly scratch and some pumpkin seeds.
A bonus with the office is that there is a part-time cleaning lady that comes everyday and prepares lunch for us. So I am almost guaranteed a free lunch if I go to the office daily. The downside of going to the office is that because of the location in the forest far from the center of town, the internet is horribly slow if not non-existent. So realistically speaking once things start rolling and I have some real work to do, I might be working from home or the Administration building in town because as an American, I am having some serious trouble working without being able to access the internet. Another bonus to the office is that there is a washing machine in the kitchen that I can use any day that I work. So, I just have to drag my dirties to the office and wash them there... however, after doing so once, I realized that maybe best to still handwash my unders at home since there isn't a dryer or even a clothesline at the office, I just kind of hang the wet clothes around the therapy room to dry while I am still at work. Not so sure that it's appropriate for my office mates to see my undies and bras hanging all over the place.
So, when I was first left alone in my apartment after an exhausting training in Kiev, saying goodbye to all my peeps, an exhausting overnight train ride to site, and then a 2 hour car ride from Kharkiv to see a filthy apartment that was now mine with a gross toilet seat I cried. I admit it. I was exhausted and dropped in the middle of nowhere with complete strangers who didn't speak any English and I was having a lot of trouble communicating with them,since it seemed like they didn't have a lot of experience communicating with someone who was learning a new language. And my mind flashed forward to being alone in the winter and trapped in my apartment, by myself and I kind of freaked. But, you know what I did? I picked up my phone and I called Conor and we bad video skyped and he saw my apartment and I saw his... and you know what... my apartment wasn't that bad. It's just all about perspective and I knew I needed to have some, but I was just too tired to manage it.
So at this point, I have found the positive. I now have a fridge. I have water and lots of it all day long - a lot of my friends here don't. I can install a hot water boiler. My windows are new and have screens on them. I have a huge, safe apartment all to myself. I don't have to share with any weird roommates. I live in the center of town and can see the administration building from my apartment. I can get anywhere in town (except my office and the train station) within a 5-10 minute walk, and I have learned that my apartment is actually quite nice once it is clean. And I have the most awesome graffiti right outside the front door of my building 'Mothe Fuker' that I can laugh at everday. To be honest, everything started to turn around once I bought a new toilet seat. Who knew that life could be set right, by a brand new powder blue cushy toilet seat? Hey, my choices were limited and I refuse to take a shit while sitting on a cushy pink toilet seat. See, it's all about having the right perspective, right?
