On Commie Block housing and water heaters

First: Thanks to the people who are reading and commenting! Mom, Dad, Weas, Ash, Little, and LilLil, I love you back. Lurkers, I love you too.

So I live in a commie block building, surrounded by other commie block buildings. This is interesting. It's actually a sort of cute flat. Nice wood floors, a little balcony, etc. It's just my American predispositions screaming. So here is where fantasy comes in.

Me: Let's pretend we're starving artists, living in a garret. We can write poems!
Lyla rolls eyes.

So then a few hours later, making myself a salami sandwich for lunch, which involves squeezing mayonnaise out of a toothpaste tube, I comment: Let's pretend we're college students. If we were in college, we would be super psyched to live here!

Lyla: I thought we were starving artists.
Me: So we're priveleged starving artists. Whatever.

Then, of course, came "Let's pretend we're frontierswomen." This one happened when we had no hot water, and I had to go to work, and smelled really bad. The solution here was to fill the tub with a few inches of the ice water that came from the tap, then boil pots of water, then add those to the ice water. This resulted in a cool, but reasonable bath.

My school, despite being an hour away along tram line 1, is lovely. It's very cute, and my contact teacher is very awesome. (As an example, she lugged my heaviest suitcase up to our 4th floor walk up like it weighed nothing while smoking and screaming into her cell phone.) I'll be teaching first and second with the help of an acerbic Hungarian gentleman. Should be fun.

Now to attempt laundry. Vaguely afraid of the machine, but pressing on anyway.

Love and miss you guys a lot!