Home Sweet Home!

I have been LOVING the past 72 hours in my new apartment! International share house: I will not miss your weird Asian food smells and cigarette smoke wafting in through my windows at 4am...

Here are pictures from move in day!

If anyone would like my new address, please e-mail me or leave a comment and I'll send it your way! I jut don't want to post it up here since my blog is open to the public... 

Now that I am no longer living there and I won't be giving my parents heart attacks, I will let you all in on a little fact: Cheryl, my Rotary host/Australian supermom, truly believes that I was living in an ex-brothel. It is just a block away from about 4 strip clubs, 2 of which flank either side of a church! hahaha. But hey, I survived it, without any immediate signs of scabies or bed bugs... so it served its good purpose of getting my out of the hostel ASAP but giving me a bit of leeway time so I could really find the perfect apartment. Which I did!

Also, I learned quite a bit from my 3 week stint there:

1. I have mastered the art of showering in the pitch black darkness... for some reason, the landlord always managed to "forget his keys" whenever he came by and a female reminded him that the lights in the bathroom were out. This is really a useful and great talent to have developed in case natural disaster #99 hits this region again this season and knocks out all of the electricity. Or just to prep for the armageddon.

2. Don't ever say "yes" when a Turkish man asks if you want to "try" the food he's making. Even despite the fact that Oscar saw I had just prepared myself a heaping salad and a big bowl of pasta for myself, he proceeded to make me an even bigger helping of pasta himself for me. When I told him it was "way, way too much! I just want a bite!" he would say "No, you must eat it all!" in a nice but very not sarcastic way. Note, this was not like he had made me a beautiful Turkish dish that he wanted me to try... this was just boiled pasta with microwaved sauce from a can poured on top, exactly like the subpar meal I had just made! Just I guess a nice gesture on his part. When I couldn't fit anymore in despite his questions of "What? Not good?" every time I slowed down, I decided to dash to my room and get a tupperware case to put the remaining pasta in. I bundle it all up, wash all the dishes and say "Here Oscar, you can have lunch ready for tomorrow. Have the rest, it's so good!" and run out of the kitchen and close the door behind me. However, about 45 minutes later of trying to let my stomach digest, I hear a soft knock on the door and thought it was maybe one of my other handful of lively international friends at the door... nope, it was Oscar with the pasta and tupperware in hand. "You forgot this" he says and walks away after leaving it with me. Ayiyiyi... I learned not to ever offer to "try a bite" from anyone in the international share house, although it was really surprising in the best of ways to see that everyone there was so overly friendly and generous. I'm much happier to have it that way than everyone keeping to themselves and being territorial.

3. I have learned to truly value some key phrases of the English language, of which no other language can quite translate juuuuust right. One night when I finally had the time to sit around with the few socialites of the house out the backdoor to chat, drink wine, and smoke (ya, it's THEIR smoke and noise that kept me up every night! But I never told them that...), the conversation drifted to funny things about the English language, since everyone at the table except me had only learned English as their second language. We had Erkin from Colombia, Oscar from Turkey, Gio from Italy, and Mari from the Philippines... and after much debate on a topic that they had carried on for 3 nights, these 4 unofficial "elders" of the international share house agreed that "Why not?" was the #1 best phrase in the English language. When I asked them "Why that phrase?" of course their responses in unison were, "Why not?" before they roared into laughter together. They spent the rest of the social hour (or 2 or 3) supporting this fact and expressing its universality... in every single sentence. And laughed at it every. single. time. But then, "Why not?" After a while I began to, too :)