New Digs, woo!

Sorry for the lack of updates, things have been hectic and I – blah blah blah blah. You don’t care about that.

The real news, is that I’ve finally moved into my new apartment (well, I’ve actually been in here for a good three weeks now), and I’m enjoying living the bachelor life once more. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed living with my host family in the past – but the old apartment was rather far from the university, and I usually had to take a bus to get to work. In this case however, I’ve now moved to an apartment that’s literally a five minute walk away from the university, and I’m having a good time.

Apartment hunting is all about location location location, because in general, for my price range, there isn’t all that much to differentiate between apartments outside of location. In America, for a price range you can see all sorts of different apartments because new buildings are being constructed all the time. Here, however, the vast majority of apartments in a particular price range are essentially exactly the same. In fact, there were two main models that I had looked at – “Khruchevkis” and “Stalinskis”. They’re so aptly nicknamed because during the Soviet Union, part of the communist program was to provide every family with housing and an apartment of their own. Stalinskis, which are characterized by having a separate room for the toilet and a separate room for the bathtub, were built during the Stalin era, and Khruchevkis, the form of which I live in now were built during the Khruchev era, with a bourgeois single bathroom.

While the apartment is generally pretty nice and well maintained, there are lots of little peculiarities about each apartment that do remind you that you’re in a country that was in the Soviet Union at one point. For the most part, many apartment buildings you’ll find in this country almost always looks like it’s in a state of general disrepair on the outside. The buildings tend to be old and cracked on the outside – if you walk in the hallway, all the paint is usually peeling and old – in general, it looks frighteningly like something out of a project in the states.

Yet, when you enter into people’s homes, the insides are almost invariably extremely well maintained and clean. In general, during the soviet times the buildings were all very well maintained on the outside as well, but with the collapse of the union, so did such maintenance techniques.

Similarly, in many kitchens across the country, you’ll find old gas stoves and ovens – but with the end of the soviet union, gas pipelines in the city fell into disrepair, and people all moved away from gas appliances to electric. Hence, I have an old stove, but I’ve got an electric range on it to cook with.

Still, you gotta love some aspects. Rent is 150 bucks a month.

Tommorow: “Washing Clothes: A City Boy’s Guide in Kazakhstan”