Living conditions

Here's where I live.

First...it's time to talk about the bathroom.

This is the set-up...not unlike most bathrooms in Jordan.

There's a shower thingee.  It's detachable from the wall...for aiming, I think.

Here's the bottom half of the shower thingee.

And the "whatever"  - catch basin, comes to mind.








Please note the bathroom is not large enough for me to back up far enough to get the entire shower arrangement in one picture.

Also, note:  no shower curtain.

My first attempts at cleaning myself involved aiming the nozzle at me while trying to avoid getting water on the floor. It didn't work.  Water hit the floor...and formed large pools.

But...that's OK.  Because there's a drain....

 

Oops, here's the drain with the cover removed.

The water doesn't flow into the drain. It needs to be pushed. 


And this is the water pushing device - known elsewhere as a broom.

Here's the full bathroom 

showing the other water- producing device against the right wall.  That's the one that can be used instead of toilet paper (not for me). 

I had problems with the set-up at the beginning, but now I'm clean and the bathroom floor's mostly swept of water.

One of our teachers when she heard of our delirium about the shower facilities wanted to know how we cleaned the bathroom floor in America. We told her that we don't usually have standing water in the bathroom. To be fair...in dry Jordan the water soon evaporates.

Now here's the drain in the kitchen. I guess in case you want to spray down the floor. The scary thing about this drain is that there is no strainer and you can see right down into the black hole of Calcutta. 

No one has been able to tell me where the water goes and how long it's been there. I try not to dwell on this.  

We live on the fourth floor and water can always be seen in the hole.

 Is there a column of water in there four stories high?

This is the kitchen faucet.  I wash dishes in my bathroom sink because 1) that's where the hot water is, and 2) this faucet doesn't work well.

The rag, apparently, fixed a leak. The faucet doesn't leak anymore, but then it doesn't turn on either.

This is the stove, connected to the propane tank. No oven. The stove has three settings: Off, On and WHOOSH.

Here are two views of the sitting room.

It looks dark because it is. There are no windows.


Many of the apartments in the building have rooms with no windows.

We have a TV,barely discernible by the table light. As of July 9th, we had access to 1,786 channels. This is not a joke.  It's not surprising that there's no TV Guide and the local paper doesn't have TV listings.

Mike, from Charleston, spent a fun evening when we first arrived and were in apartment #2 (this is apartment #3) flipping through all channels trying to find either anything in English or anything that was not a man chanting.

As of last night we had access to 648 channels. Who knows what happened to the rest of them.  The horror channel that I get on channel 942 (well, now it's on channel 386), the guys next door get it on Channel 10.  

One thing that's been consistent is Aljazeera in English on Channel 563.  I watch a lot of news.

Here's my bedroom/study. It's bright all the time and a pretty good room. 

At night party central is four stories down in a parking lot and there is constant street noise including horns, but still it's pretty comfortable and "home" for me right now.

The pink-checked sheets were provided by the management - they are not mine.

Here's where I play on the Internet. Wireless access  like TV access is varied. Which means it isn't always available. We are now connected to some kind of "default" network and it appears to be working -- for now.

Studying on the bed is uncomfortable over long periods and studying in the living room is gloomy. So I am forced to look for cafes. That's a problem now since it's Ramadan (the month of fasting).  More on this situation in a later blog.

This apartment is really not bad (considering the first accommodations we had here) and particularly once I figured out the workings of the bathroom.

I still don't want to think about the drain holes and what they contain.

And there is one other curious aspect to the building. The elevator.

Here's a picture of the button device for the floors. There's the GF (ground floor) and the other floors,  2-4. But there's one button which is covered over. Why?  What other floor is there? Who/what lives there? Humans?  Spies? Zombies? Republicans? Or was another floor planned and scrapped.  Is this a defective elevator? The questions just don't stop.

And off to study!