I’m settling into my new apartment in my new city. So far,
Minsk, the apartment and my assignment are all fabulous.
Yes, it’s going to be a lot colder than I have been in
awhile, but I got a short reprieve upon arrival and made do with a light
hoodie. That’s going to change quickly but I’m enjoying it right now. Friday’s
a holiday and I’m hoping to wander around in what might be the last decent
weekend weather-wise.
My apartment is pretty awesome. It’ll be lost on me, since
I’m pretty boring and don’t entertain, but it’s still the envy of the housing
pool. I’m smack dab in the city center. It’s about a mile to the office; I’m
hoping to hoof it as much as possible and it’s a nice walk. Granted, it’s going
to be a cold and dark walk in the winter, but that’s the intention. I have a
couple of metro stops nearby and that’s an option, but as I understand it, it
takes about as long to metro as it does to walk so, unless I’m in danger of
frostbite, why not walk? (We’ll see how that plays out …)
Location aside, the apartment itself is still pretty
incredible. I have a bedroom with a walk-in closet bigger than Wendy’s living
room and the apartment itself is larger than the Tallahassee home. The bathroom
is phenomenal, probably bigger than Zippy’s bedroom, although it’s not shaped
like a square. It’s kind of a triangle with a Nebraska-like foot sticking out.
The whole thing is absolutely huge and made me wonder how to heat it in the
winter, but then I realized it had heated floors. That’s awesome!
My guest room has two twin beds and my office has enough
room to have a big workout space once my shipments get here. The kitchen, too,
is pretty large as far as I’m concerned. It’s kind of a shame because in
reality, I’ll camp out in one chair and my room. Oh! Speaking of, there’s a
little balcony off my room, too.
Really, it’s an amazing apartment. I don’t deserve it, and I
mean that. My department is really hierarchal, and I’m on the bottom. The
apartment is for someone who’s far closer to the top than me, but because it
was the only thing available when I arrived, I got it. Score.
Looking forward to my new assignment, too. I’ve got a cool
opportunity as the first one in my position in about 10 years. There’s a lot to
wrap my mind around and prioritize. So far everyone is really nice; there
aren’t many American staff in the office so the arrival of new one means I can
take over some of other people’s workloads. That’s not limited to American
staff members’ work, but in shouldering anything, it frees up people’s time to
focus on other stuff, something that’s welcome.
Minsk is very nice. Everyone says it’s great living and that
you can find everything here. (I found peanut butter, so that’s a good start.)
There are a lot of American places. Of course, there’s McDonald’s; we’re also
having Domino’s today. Oddly, though, there’s no Starbucks. In Guangzhou, I had
two within sight of my apartment. There’s a Cinnabon, though, which is pretty
incredible. I remember one being in Yerevan, but other than that, the only ones
I’ve seen are in U.S. malls. So that’s cool. According to my map, there’s one
600 meters from my house. There’s a movie theater that has an English language
movie for a heartbeat every once in awhile (show showing: Shawshank
Redemption!) 890 meters away. I’ll be checking into that for sure, though not
for something I’ve seen 17,821 times. Ford v. Ferrari is coming soon.
Besides McD’s, there’s also a TGI Friday’s right near my
house. It’s across from this really cool department store called GUM. (I saw it
on the map and thought it must be a gym, but no, it’s GUM.) It’s a Soviet-era
department store in an old building and is apparently organized in a haphazard
way. I went into the bottom floor and poked around the household stuff. At some
point, I have to do a shopping spree for fun stuff like a broom, vacuum and TV
but that can wait.
Yeah, the initial cash outlay is going to hurt in a few
weeks. So far, I’ve been posted to places that didn’t need me to bring stuff
like dishes, TVs or flatware. As a result, all that stuff – which I do own – is
sitting, out of reach, in a warehouse somewhere. So now I’m checking out
Target, Walmart and the local stores and trying to price stuff I’ll need.
Friday is a holiday here, so I can do some staycationing. No
idea what I’ll do. There’s so much!
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