October 10, 2010
Hey, happy 10-10-10!
I'm finally feeling settled into my new apartment (my permanent place, not the first place). Somehow it only took a few touches to make it home-y. Sadly, I think that involved messing it up a bit. I've uncovered a few surprises since moving in. Only one is bad: I can't move couch out from in front of the window so to open it fully. Most are good: screens on the windows, a water filter, a few jugs of un-opened bottled water, lights in the stairwell, and satellite radio connected to my TV. That means I get NPR! I was actually happy when I heard Car Talk come out of the speakers. Technology is amazing. The best surprise is that one of my co-workers, a local who speaks fluent English. lives right downstairs from me, so he can help me with translation or whatever if I have any problems. This was a great coincidence, but wait for the crazy part: his wife, who also speaks English, studied abroad in Iowa. Even weirder, we realized that we were at the very same rally for Obama in Waterloo back in 2008. How do these things happen? “Small world” is far too cliché to apply to a situation like this.
This ex-pat thing is definitely an interesting experience, and I'm glad I'm getting a taste of it now. I'm in a weird kind of mindset now, torn between eating it all up and being a Peace Corps volunteer snob and turning up my nose at all the foreigners and their weaknesses for things like ice, diet coke, and indoor plumbing. In any case, this is a really great way for a mediocre, middle class, Midwestern girl to try out being fancy-shmancy once in a while. Like tonight—I attended a fashion show and dinner at the Hyatt to benefit victims of domestic violence in Tajikistan (incidentally, the government apparently censored the event, and the announcers were not allowed to talk about this problem at all. So strange.). In any case, it was a neat event, and I can't wait to get my hands on some Tajik silk—it is really some of the most beautiful fabric I've ever seen.
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