The post entitled The End referred to my teaching experience. I get to write about cleaning, packing, and miscellaneous anecdotes now! I'll be honest, cleaning is a pain. A royal pain. I look around my apartment and sigh. It's difficult to motivate myself to do it because it's so hot in my apartment. However, I've gotten some things done and I'm pleased with what I've done so far.
The first thing I want to talk about is garbage. I honestly didn't know how garbage collection worked in my apartment... You can see how this could become an issue. At first, it wasn't a huge problem, I would put something in a plastic bag, and tie the bag up and put it in the kitchen, usually. Well, garbage bags (the big old bags with pull ties) don't exist here, I ended up using grocery bags. This worked to an extent, I'd come home with whatever street food I picked up for dinner, eat most, if not all of it, and put it into a new garbage bag. This system worked except when it came to water. After my huge water incident, I started buying bottled water 12 bottles for a dollar (good deal). Instead of tossing them in a bag, I would toss them aside to reuse them (maybe), this lead to 70% of the crap on my floor being water bottles. My first step in cleaning was to clean up anything that was garbage on the floor and put it into bags. This was easy and it took almost no time at all. I also figured out where the garbage goes, there's a small garbage can outside in the alley *facepalm*.
I'd like to take a moment to explain one of my favorite Khmer dishes, mee chaa. That is the Khmer word for fried noodles with meat and vegetables. It usually has beef, broccoli, bok choy, and onion. It's delicious. Sometimes coming home from work I would get some from this restaurant near the school for a meer $1.75. They are really generous with the serving, it's literally overflowing out of the to go thingy. I had this a few times and from there it's okay. The last time I brought it home, I ate about 3/4ths of it and closed the box and wrapped it up in a garbage bag. I like the place down the street from my house, where the portion is smaller but it tastes better and is only a dollar. One day when I was moving garbage bags from the living room to the kitchen, I picked up the bag with the thrown out mee chaa and it started dripping meat juice everywhere. I put it in the kitchen and thought nothing of it.
Fast forward to today where I'm cleaning the kitchen. I finish cleaning it (for the most part, one area could use a little more scrubbing) and I started moving some of the garbage bags around. I came across the garbage bag that had the now rotten mee chaa in it. I moved it out of the way and there was a massive pool of rotten meat juice. I made some space and ran and got my mop and mopped up the rancid pool. I have an old fashioned kind of mop but it worked surprisingly well. That put me in mop mode, so I quickly mopped up the hallway which needed it. At this point I've cleared out most of the garbage, washed the bathroom, kitchen, and hallway, packed some clothes, and sorted out my important papers. I ultimately don't have a lot left to do so I'm very proud of myself.
Till next time...
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