Home Un-Sweet Home

On Thursday evening, I got a phone call from the people I rented my apartment from, informing me that their mother was returning from Moscow and wanted her apartment back... by Monday. But not to fear, they said, it's only a couple days notice, but they worked that I could move to their husband's aunt's extra apartment. So Friday I came and looked at the place and Sunday I moved over here into the husband's aunt's extra apartment. Apparently this sort of thing is pretty common in Almaty and there are all sorts of horror stories going around about people getting kicked out of their apartments on very short notice.

To make a long story short, this other place is definitely not as nice as my last apartment and I'm a bit peeved about the situation. When I visited the place on Friday, it seemed fine. Very poorly decorated, for sure, but what can you do. Upon closer inspection, though, I realized that I overlooked certain key details. Perhaps my favorite one is that there is no sink in the bathroom. As you can hopefully see from the picture, there is a toilet, washing machine, and (old) shower. There is even a mirror above where a sink would be. But no sink. So all this leaves me brushing my teeth and washing my hands in the bathtub. Additionally, the refrigerator is horrendously old and runs so loudly that it kept me up last night. It sounds like a plane coming in for a landing and can be heard throughout the apartment. The stove doesn't appear to have a pilot light, so I apparently have to light it myself... the very thought of which freaks me out. To add insult to injury, the people who lived here last took the toilet paper with them, though they were nice enough to leave me some straws in the kitchen cabinets. I could go on, but I'll restrain myself ... Though if it matters, the bed is too small for me (I'm only 5'2"!) and really uncomfortable... Ok, really I'll stop now.

In the end, I never did figure out how to change the lightbulb in the last apartment. But as of this evening, I can't get the tv to work here, so my technology problems appear to be following me. Excuse me while I go check out the classified ads to look for a new place to live...

How many grad students does it take to change a lightbulb?

For about a week now, I have been living with no light in the kitchen of my apartment. The day after I moved in, the bulb in the kitchen lamp burnt out and I haven't managed to replace it. Not for lack of trying, either. I've been carrying around this burnt-out lightbulb in my bag every day for a week and have stopped at every grocery store I can find to try to find a replacement. I have tried three separate stores and they all claim to carry this particular bulb, but are currently out of stock. (I somehow doubt this... It seems unlikely that there is a rush on lighbulbs across Almaty this week...) In the meantime, I have been cooking dinner in the dark. Sometimes I turn on the tv in the kitchen for extra light. I suppose this is a new twist on the old joke-- Instead of "how many grad students does it take to change a lightbulb?" the real question is "how long does it take a grad student to figure out how to change a lightbulb?"

The good news is that in the search for a new lightbulb I have discovered a new grocery store close to my house. This supermarket was recommended in my guidebook, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Last week I went to the intersection it was supposedly located at and even walked a full block in every direction looking for it, but to no avail. I finally found it today. It turned out to be hidden behind several rows of kiosks and food stalls and has virtually no name on the front of the building. But it carries a huge selection of US products (ShopRite brand!) and the prepared food looked very good. No liver cake in sight-- Hooray!!

Consumerism at its best

Like any good American, I spent Sunday afternoon at the mall. I met a few Kazakh friends (yes, friends!) at a mall food court and we got lunch at a take-out place called King Burger. No, that's not dyslexia speaking, it was actually called King Burger and not Burger King.

The idea of a mall is pretty novel for Central Asia. Kazakhstan has been experiencing some pretty remarkable economic growth in recent years, thanks to investment in its oil resources and a growing banking/finance industry. This has fueled the growth of a Kazakh "middle class," which in turn has spurred a demand for Western goods and Western lifestyles. And so was born the Kazakh mall...

There are actually several malls around Almaty. The biggest and newest is the MegaCenter, pictured here. It has a movie theater, an ice skating rink, a climbing wall, and a food court, in addition to dozens of luxury shops and a huge grocery store. It is a pretty surreal experience, especially because the halls are filled with janitorial women-- about one woman every ten feet or so-- who continuously mop the floor to get rid of the mud and dirt tracked in by us shoppers. They sort of scurry after you as you walk down the hall... making them the closest thing I'll ever have to a maid. (By the way, I'll save a full discussion of the omnipresent mud for another day...) Anyway, so MegaCenter and the other malls around get packed on the weekends with new middle class Kazakhs who fight over parking spaces for their Toyotas, Land Rovers, and BMWs. Just another part of the American dream exported to Central Asia...

Zenkov Cathedral

The weather was a bit nicer and warmer today. I think it even got above freezing-- balmy by recent Almaty standards. The 2 inches of frozen mud melted from the sidewalks for at least a couple hours and it was finally almost pleasant to walk around a little bit. I ventured to the big Green Bazaar, about 3 blocks from my apartment and bought some oranges. I also meandered into Panfilov Park to get a look at the Zenkov Cathedral. It dates from the early-1900s and, according to my Lonely Planet, is one of the only pre-Soviet buildings left in Almaty. (Most of the others were leveled in a series of earthquakes around 1910.) It is also made entirely of wood, including the nails.

Liver Cake

I have found feeding myself to be a bit of a challenge here. This should come as no surprise, since I often have this problem when I am in a new place. Every meal presents a new set of questions: Where can I buy food? What does this word mean on the menu (or on the side of the box)? What is least likely to give me food poisoning? So for the most part, I have been subsisting on pasta, cinnamon buns from the local American-style cafe, and sometimes actually get a full meal if someone invites me out to dinner.

Tonight I decided to try something new-- I stopped at the local supermarket to buy some of their prepared food to reheat at home. After much deliberation, I ordered a slice of something that labeled "pechonochniy tort." I wasn't sure what that meant, but I know that "tort" means cake and "pech" means to bake, and the whole thing looked a lot like lasagna. I figured a "baked cake" that looked like lasagna couldn't be so bad, right? Well, I was halfway home, carrying my slice of "baked cake" when I realized that "pechen" actually means liver and I had definitely just ordered liver cake for dinner. Ouch. The liver cake is in the trash now, and it's looking like another night of pasta for me.

On the bright side, I managed to get 5 liters of water at the store, so I at least won't be thirsty for a while.

By the way, I have absolutely no idea why the picture here is sideways. It must be a glitch in uploading the image to the blog, but I can't figure out how to fix it...

Home Sweet Home

Hello everyone! Here are a few pictures of my apartment. Some of the pictures are blurry, unfortunately, but hopefully clear enough to get a sense of the place. I'll be living here for at least the next month. I think it's a pretty nice place by Almaty standards (and my grad student budget!) but it is taking some getting used to. The apartment belongs to an older, retired man and his wife. The wife is in Moscow, but until I moved in on Monday the man was living here. So I am very much "subletting" the apartment. This is a one-room apartment, meaning that there is one main living room, a kitchen, bathroom, and main entryway. It turns out that the kitchen gets decent light (even though it has been cloudy/smoggy since I arrived!) so it is a cheery place to get some work done.