Water

Given that a large part of our life revolves around water (bathing in it, drinking it, using it, etc) I figured I should devote some more time on this matter.

Firstly, we only get water for a certain number of hours a day. Water comes freely between the hours of 7-11, and then again 6-10. So we have eight solid hours a day where we can shower, flush, wash, or do laundry. That’s not as much as you would think. Another problem with this is that the water isn’t hot and you have to turn on the heater to get a solid 4-7 minute hot shower about 45 minutes to an hour before you want your shower.

This is what my roommate and I have managed to figure out thus far. However, apparently the man who lives beneath us is saying that there’s water leaking into his apartment from us but we have no idea how this is possible since we’ve been following all the rules our landlord has been telling us. Her son came over yesterday and kept repeating that certain switches had to be off at certain times, which we’ve been doing. We’ve also recently figured out that if we turn on one of these switches during the hours when there’s no water, water magically appears. No one has told us why this happens or if we’re allowed to do it, and neither one of us wants to get in trouble again. (Although this seems inevitable.)

About 10 minutes ago some lady knocked on our door and started speaking Azerbaijani rapidly and gesturing to the upstairs and downstairs of our apartment. She and her daughter didn’t speak Russian, and Karli and I don’t speak Azerbaijani. We both stood there clueless as to what she was saying. We tried giving her our landlady’s number, which she seemed to understand, and then didn’t want it. Then she wrote down some work in Cyrillic which I’ve never heard of before and looked up and doesn’t exist. I’m completely baffled. Something tells me it has something to do with water, but again… I have no idea. I guess if it’s important enough they’ll be back with someone who speaks Russian. Or we’re going to have call someone who speaks Azerbaijani if they appear again. By the way, this has been our first encounter with someone who can’t speak any Russian.

Anyways, back to the water. The lack of water during the day makes showering really difficult. If you miss waking up in time (which clearly I do since I like to sleep late) then you’re pretty much screwed until about 6:30 when the water might be lukewarm enough to take a shower. The lack of water also prevents the flushing of the toilet which without going into much detail can get pretty awkward. It also means you can’t wash your hands either after such alleged business. Really disgusting. I’ve been using a lot of hand sanitizer and I think at some point someone (cough cough) is going to have to send me large bottles of hand sanitizer.

The lack of water can get really annoying at night too. 10 o’clock can come and go pretty fast so a lot of times we’ll both forget to wash our dishes from dinner until it’s past 10 and then we have to wait until the next morning to do it. And then if we don’t wake up in time to wash the dishes by 11, then we have to wait again until 6. So of course we frequently have crusty dishes in our sink, and there’s not much either one of can do about this.

On the same note as water is the business with bottled water. As is pretty common throughout Europe, water comes either still or carbonated. People here like the carbonated water a lot more than regular still water. I really don’t like carbonated water which is a bit of a problem since sometimes when I’m deathly thirsty and wandering around the stores won’t have any still water. Then when I finally manage to find still water (usually pretty cheap, it’s about 50 geppik, so like 60 cents) I chug the whole thing like a total lunatic.

Anyways, those are my thoughts for today. I know, I didn’t put up the pictures yet. I got distracted last night. I will later though, I promise. I have some other thoughts I might try to post later as well.

Also, many of you have been asking for an address to send me stuff. The mail system here is utterly unreliable so I’m not going to even bother giving you my apartment address since I don’t think I’ll ever receive anything here. (Mailbox, what?) Once I’ve been there a bit longer I’m going to ask the Academy/ Museum if I can get mail sent there (which I’m sure I can). So hold tight, I’ll let you know my address once I do!

P.S. The time difference is 9 hours ahead. So right now it's 2 pm here, and it's a lovely 5 am in the states. (Thanks for always commenting, Hannah :))