My Filthy Moscow Apartment

My apartment wasn't the infested-with-cockroach kind of dirty that I had seen in Korea, but a hasn't-been-cleaned-since-we-put-up-these-2009-calendars type of dirty that I hadn't even imagined before. It was a whole new kind of gross. The carpets hadn't been vacuumed, probably since sometime before I crunched my face. There was a dirty pot in the sink. There were dirty rags here and there. The toilet hadn't been cleaned. The floors were so filthy that a finger tip swiped over it would come up black. The pillow I was meant to use had been thrown in a corner long ago and had yellowed in to a barely usable mass of repulsion. The walls in each room are stained in various places, likely never having seen a rag since they were erected. All of the sinks were so covered in filth that it took some time scrubbing to prove they could still shine at all. It smelled like cat food that had been sitting out since the 1970's. I really could go on. And on. And on.

No, I wouldn't say that I'm thrilled with the accommodation provided by the school. This is probably the least thrilled I've ever been by any accommodation, anywhere, paid for or otherwise. Really, it was unfathomably bad.

It's gotten better over the past two weeks. That is to say, I have made an effort to improve things. On the bright side, there were lots of cleaning agents left behind with all of the other previous owner's garbage, so that was pretty exciting. After getting down on my hands and knees and scrubbing the kitchen floor twice, now my finger tip only turns grey when I swipe it across the tile. Also, there's a vacuum cleaner, which worked just swell after it exhausted some foul odors in response to being turned on for the first time in 20 years.

I'm not sure if it's because I had low expectations coming here, I've been teaching abroad for a while now and know the drill, or because I've decided that apathy is easier than anger, but I haven't once gotten upset about this whole thing. Maybe I just think it's hilarious that I invested all of my savings from Japan on this? It's probably that.