Our Apartment

I think I’ve decided that the apartment really isn’t all too bad—at least after Andrew and I spent all weekend cleaning. It was so gross. We went and bought sheets for our bed because the ones on it were sketchy! We vacuumed the bed and sprayed it with Lysol (or the closest thing to it) and I put fabric softener under the sheets. The bed was so gross—you’d sit on it and dust would puff up…there was hair all over it. It was gross! Now it is a lot better now that we can sleep without getting dust all over (we’d wake up so stuffed up!). A lot of people had the same problem here, so if you are planning on coming to the Middle East, I would suggest bringing sheets with you so that you can sleep the first night here without wondering if you are going to contract some strange disease.

Our Bedroom

Fabric softener was a good idea to bring, too. Since they don’t have driers here, they usually just sell liquid fabric softener. Andrew and I brought a huge box of Bounce because we thought that mosquitoes would be a big problem (which they aren’t—there are hardly any bugs here at all). I put them everywhere in the house! Under the rugs, under every couch cushion, on top of all the cabinets, in the closets…everywhere! The house still smells a lot like paint/smoke but it is a lot better (meaning that it doesn’t give me a headache). And amazingly enough, it doesn’t really smell like fabric softener either…there is a faint laundry smell but nothing too over powering.

Bathrooms: we really are quite blessed in this department. We have two bathrooms (we have only used one so far because one is so small and then it also has the water heater in it so that makes it even smaller). The big bathroom has a shower, a toilet, a bidet, and a sink. It takes awhile for the hot water to get to the shower, but once it does, it gets really hot! We can’t open the window in the bathroom because some birds are nesting on the window sill right outside…there are bird droppings all over the window and even some inside the bathroom, so that window stays closed tight! Andrew was nice enough to take the job of cleaning the bathroom while I did the kitchen.

As iffy as our bathrooms are, we are blessed because a lot of people have the toilet-shower combination. I’m not sure how fun that is…

To help get rid of the smell in here, I also vacuumed like a mad-man while Andrew was at school one day. I took the attachments off the vacuum and scrubbed the floor with the vacuum hose. It looks a lot nicer now and little puffs of dust/paint flakes don’t come up when you walk.

I feel perfectly safe here now and can see a lot of interesting things from the balcony…goats and gas trucks. It’s fun.