Moving!!!

So, as I not so subtly hinted at a couple times, the housing situation here in Ukraine has been bad, but I felt incredibly guilty any time the thought crept into my head. The more often I thought, "I can't live here," the guiltier I felt. At first I tried to pass it off as, "Well, things aren't quite aesthetically pleasing, but don't be princess, that's not what matters." As I tiptoed around broken glass and rusted nails, I'd think, "The locals deal with this all the time, you just need to wear the right shoes. If they don't have tetanus, you won't either." All the while, I would here in one ear "Don't be a snob, this is just inconvenient, you're NOT going to be an ungrateful house guest," and in the other ear the kind Ukrainian cop saying, "Ah, I'm surprised they put a girl like you in Troeshina, it has the most crime in all of Kiev."

The final straw came a couple nights ago, around 11:30pm when I was trying to get home after the Germany-Spain game (which I don't want to talk about, thankyouverymuch). I tried to hail one cab, and when I told him my address he looked at me like I had the plague. So I find another cabbie, and he says that he won't go there, but this other cabbie might, and he walks me over there. He gives me a price that I find acceptable, and I get in the car. Once the door is shut and locked behind me, I remember my host sister's admonitions to not take random cabs, but to call a company, since some drivers operate independently and you never know where they'll take you. Then I remember my friend, who was roofied at a club here in Kiev (on a night I was supposed to be out with him, but stayed in since I wasn't feeling well), and the taxi driver who took him home followed him INTO HIS ROOM and stole about $300 that had been lying on his desk. I suddenly thought I was about to have a panic attack. The driver turned out to be fine, as you may have gathered from the fact that I'm here to blog about it. I rushed into my apartment, and cried. I needed to get the hell out of Troeshina.

I talked to my program director the next day, and he seemed reticent. "Ah, but your family is so nice, I give you our nicest family and I'm sad you cannot overlook a few inconveniences." Does he think I'm upset because it's far? I explain again that the neighborhood is not safe, and I want to live some place that is. "Oh, but everywhere is a little dangerous, you just have to be careful." Fair enough, but I wouldn't use that to say it doesn't matter if I put a young foreigner with limited English skills in South-Central LA instead of Westwood. As he realizes I'm not going to let this go, finally he tells me, "You know, it will be more expensive." When I had initially asked for quotes on housing, he never mentioned a pricing scale for host families. It would cost X amount, and I'd be in the downtown. Is this going to be yet ANOTHER person who is trying to rip me off because I'm foreign? I cried myself to sleep for the second night in a row.

At that point, I really wanted nothing more than to go home. I'll be going back to DC for Fulbright orientation in a week, and I was quite close to using a flight voucher I have to catch a flight to Los Angeles instead of back to Kiev. The only thing that stopped me from looking too far into this option was that I realized how much money it would cost to get me and my bags back to Europe at the end of the summer. I posted a brief message (in which I confess to breaking the "Quit bitching" mantra) to my friend Ben on Facebook throughout all this.

Yesterday, I checked my Facebook before heading off to dinner. I had a message from a Ukrainian-born friend of mine from college that shocked me, made me cry (again), and probably completely changed my summer here: "I just talked to my mom. She's going to call my grandma. We have friends who live close to our apartment in Kiev who should have the key to the apartment and who know some English. It's a very nice apartment, very well-furnished, washing machine and kitchen and flat-screen TV and 2 bedrooms. And it's in a VERY nice neighborhood. And you don't need to pay rent. Give me your number and tell the guy who put you in Troeshina to fuck off." She would later tell me, "I didn't think it was THAT bad... but Troeshina... man..."

I'm packing today. I move in tomorrow.