Erbil’s still fantastic. It’s pretty much a ghost town, but
it’s my little ghost town, at least for now. And it’s as boring as ever, at
least on weekends.
During the week, I usually work until 6 p.m., then head to
the gym, which takes until 7:30 or 8 p.m., so, after a shower and dinner, that’s
pretty much all she wrote. But weekends are far more boring. Even sleeping late
– 7 a.m. for me – puts me done in the gym, showered and fed, and even post-nap,
by 10 a.m., and after that, there’s just not much else to do. I work for a
couple of hours so I don’t get behind (everyone here works 7 days, but me far
less than most) but that’s about it.
The do seem to subscribe to a better AFN; there seem to be
more movie channels. One of them consistently plays Star Wars. I’ve seen the
tail end of “Han Solo” once and “The Last Jedi” three times since I’ve arrived.
And I’ve snagged DVDs from the library, catching the whole first series of “Big
Little Lies” and some of “Breaking Bad,” which isn’t near as good the second or
third time around.
I haven’t made it off campus; since there aren’t as many people
here, they don’t offer the grocery store runs as often. Since I’m due to leave at
the start of July, it doesn’t make sense to sign up to go anyway; I’m about
halfway done. This late in the game, I figure I should just make do with what I
have.
It might be a Peace Corps trait: seeing what you have and
then figuring out what you can do with it. We had a little party last night and
I remembered I’d looted a brownie mix from the other house, and threw it
together. I’d bought eggs, so I used three of them. The “sauce” package called
for milk, and what do you know, I’d brought the rest of the powdered milk, so I
used that, too. As far as what I brought, I’m down to a little powered milk,
rice and lentils from the grocery store and tea bags, Stevia, two root beets
and six individual cereal bowls. The store-bought stuff is at one serving of alfredo
sauce, a stick of butter (not really sure why I bought this) and eggs that won’t
quite carry me through. When they run out I’ll double up on the cereal, or
something. No plans on taking anything back. I’ve lugged the 50-pound bag
enough recently.
In the little break office here, there’s a nice massage chair,
which I love. My calves are always tight and when you sit in the chair barefoot
it gives you nice little foot massage. Since my current tennis shoes don’t fit
quite right and have rubbed massive blisters on my heels, I appreciate this.
And in inspecting the Kennedy half dollar-sized blood blister on my right foot,
I realized I have some pretty darn ugly heels.
And in the cupboard here, I have a ton of salt. It’s once of
those spices that everyone buys and of course they only sell in giant bags. I’ve
no idea how much normal people use salt, but one of those Morton’s things lasts
me for years. And in each TDY house I’ve been, there might not be much, but
there’s a ton of salt. I guess everyone buys a bag without checking first to
see if there’s any they could use. Why would you, I suppose, except in the
6-bedroom TDY house there were probably four canisters of it, and in the house
I’m in now there were two.
That’s past tense. There’s only one now. As I was looking at
my horridly ugly feet, two words popped into my head: “salt scrub.” Without
bothering to research what exactly a salt scrub might entail outside of, you
know, salt, I went to the cabinet to see what I had. Olive oil! Perfect! I
decided to jimmy up a salt scrub and pamper my feet. Seriously, there is
nothing to do in Erbil!
I dumped out half a salt container and some oil. Proportions
schaportions. I just winged it. I realized in almost every foot massage I’ve
ever had (you can count on one hand), I’ve had my feet soaked before, I looked
around for something to use and came up with a huge broiler pan. I suppose this
might gross the next TDYer out, but I’ll never tell. After looking at what
spices I had, I went with rosemary, and dumped a bunch in. Then I remembered I found
some tea tree oil soap and threw that in, which scattered the rosemary but
whatever.
Here, you don’t have to worry about getting the water warm
enough. It is so hot outside and we don’t have nice things like good plumbing,
so the water is hot in the summer. After my morning run, I can’t get the water
cold enough for a shower – and I don’t like cold showers. It’s hot. Always hot,
so I figured that’s perfect for a DIY foot soak.
Gotta say, it was pretty blissful. It would have been more blissful
delivered by some strong-muscled guy,
but it was pretty nice. I just curled up with a book – Up In the Air, which was
wildly different than the movie – and then scrubbed my feet raw. Not bad. They’re still cracked, callous-y and ugly,
but they feel a lot better.
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