Movin on up, to the Eastside...

To a Delux apartment in the sky-igh, movin on up
Beans don't burn in the kitchen, fish don't burn on the grill<
something something about gettin up that hill.

Yes I know I am amazing with lyrics. That's from The Jefferson's in case you didn't recognize it. By the way, I am typing on what looks to be an Italian keyboard. Some of the keys have been moved, for example apostrophe is à and the shift key is shorter and it took me five minutes to find and use the @ key.

At the end of the month, I will be moving out of my shpi (shortened form of the word shtepi which, you guessed it, means house). The house where I live now is actually pretty nice. The only thing keeping it from being great is the Turkish toliet. After three months of living with such facilities, I really have no problem with it. Granted I still won't use one any place other than my shpi.

So why am I moving? Well, you see, the new place is better in almost every way. I will be leaving my 2 bedroom, Turkish for a 3 bedroom, western. Here's the kicker. The place has two, count 'em, two bathrooms with western toliets. The bathrooms are small and right next to each other and should be combined to form on larger bathroom but yet again people forgot to hire me a design consultant.
The corridor is even larger. Large enough to house a ping pong table (I plan to fashion one out of plywood, any suggestions?) I have a nice large covered balcony at my front door ( I am on the third floor of a house, each level is a separate house). Oh, how could I forget. I will have water 24/7 because this district has a separate contract with the water supply company. Yay! I will also be able to easily access the roof terrace. I already have some ideas for spring/summer usage. The family owns a small gym next to the house and I will have free usage, saving me $20-$30 a month. Plus this house is close to Katie's new place.

Another benefit is that I can come and go as I please. At my current place, the gate to the compound doesn't lock using a key, instead there is a bar that slides across to secure it. During the day, I usually enter and exit through the attached dyqan (doo-chan = small store). However, when they close the dyqan, my only option is to ring the bell and have someone let me in. It hasn't been a problem when I have come home late. They don't seem annoyed but I just don't like it. Especially now that winter is coming. They are closing the dyqan before 8:00. It feels like I have a curfew.

Now all that's left is to inform the family that I will not be staying there. I an NOT looking forward to this. A couple times before, we have had some communication problems so there seems to be a residual tension. Plus, the house is nice (other volunteers have it far worse) and they have been generally good to me. Though we agreed that me choosing to stay or them wanting me to stay was not a forgone conclusion at the beginning, I bet they are going to be surprised and annoyed. They will have put up with me for 4 months with the definite benefit of me paying $100 rent for two years on an otherwise unused house.

Like I said I do not want to tell them. Is it too awful to just let them know when I am moving my stuff out? Hopefully I will have a chance to tell the father today. Wish me luck.