Elista once more...Laundry and the Squatty Potty

Well dear readers, tomorrow will put me at the week mark here in Russia.  I both cannot already believe it's been a week and at the same time can't believe it's only been a week.  I haven't exactly started my teaching yet and will be doing so in segments as the weeks go by.  It's going to be an interesting experience because for the first several weeks I will be teaching an "optional" class, in English and on American culture, for students who want to improve their English and spending time in various professors' classrooms as they ask me in as a guest speaker/lecturer/teacher/American.  It will be sort of a hectic schedule for a while with not real set schedule, which is a bit unnerving, but I'll have to make due.  Come mid-Oct to late November, I'll start working with Access students, which is 10-14 year old students working on improving their English in sort of an afterschool type program.  Should be fun and quite interesting.

Anyways, update on my living conditions.  I did laundry! Sweet! And better yet??? I didn't have to wash it by hand, which is great because let's be honest; for those of you who know me, if I had to do something by hand, it's likely it wasn't going to get done, which means I'd almost certainly become the smelly kid in class. I mean factor in some dirty clothes with the heat and dust here... fuhgeddaboudit.

I also got a fan for my room.  Strength-wise it kinda feels like maybe a baby fart (that means it's real week and doesn't put out much air), however it seems to be getting the job done during the warm nights, though the last couple of nights have been considerably cooler and it even rained last night.

Now for the big one (no pun intended): the squatty potty.  Bathrooms here are something that I'm still having considerable trouble getting used to, like bringing my own toilet paper everywhere I go.  The lights in the bathrooms in the dorm do not work so we're going in the dark (I'm gonna ask Springsteen or maybe Weird Al to write "Pooping In The Dark") and if Jake Phillips should read this blog....well he can ask me about blind people....   Anyways, I digress so now back to topic.  The bathrooms at the university seem to only be squatty potties, which means no toilet per se, just a hole in the ground and I won't do this.  I just won't.  It's a disaster waiting to happen with scenarios so unimaginably horrible that I don't dare speak of them.  What all this means is that there is an extremely likely chance that, like my previous time in Russia, a serious bathroom disaster is bound to happen only this time it will, in all likelihood, be considerably worse and that is a terrifying thought indeed.

So ponder these thoughts Dear Reader and be grateful, be grateful indeed. Until next time.