if you don't scrub that kitchen floor...

you ain't gonna rock 'n roll no more...

these were our best buddies...especially with all the piles of dirt and leaves out on the blacony :-)

a bathtub full of cleaning supplies...the bathtub was the cleanest thing in the apartment since they just put in a new one that day...


our very first lunch @ home!
the other picture is the "mirpeset sheirut" outside our kitchen

mmmmm...yummy.

we poured about 10 buckets of water throughout the apartment to get all the dust and dirt out...


riiight. well there were no "papers to take out" but we definitely took out the trash -- mostly bags full of sand and dust that clearly proved our theory about how often they cleaned that apartment!

It was good times...well, quite tiring, but overall we enjoyed making our apartment into a swimming pool with the "sponja" of a lifetime :-)

The difference between yesterday at 10am and when we left at 7:30 or so was amazing, and definitely necessary. We even had our first meal at the apartment, sitting on the porch.

Random funny things to note:
1) I ran after 50 sheckels that blew away in the wind during our lunch break -- right into the street with oncoming traffic. Luckily I realized it, quickly ran away, and even mangaged to catch up with my 50 sheckels as soon as all the cars went by. But it was pretty ridiculous scene to watch, and yet, coming from me, not all that surprising.
2) Our neighbor works at a coffee/bistro type place on the corner near out apartment and recognized us since her window looks out into our "mirpeset sheirut" (the little porch/balcony outside our kitchen) and I was like, oh, that's the one who had to listen to me sing myself silly while cleaning the kitchen for two hours... oops. She was very nice.
3) So it turns out that when you wash the floor in our apartment, there are two routes for the water to go -- one is in one balcony near the living room and the other from the balcony near the kitchen. We pushed all the water through the kitchen as to avoid making dirty what we just cleaned -- and in the process all the water goes out this little pipe and down to the ground three stories below. The only problem is that people hang their laundry out to dry exactly where the water falls and so the poor soul on the first floor who apparently washed his/her slippers and left them out to dry, will be unpleasantly surprised with the now EXTREMELY not clean water filled slippers...oops. we left a nice note and apologized so hopefully we haven't caused too much neighborly damage.

It's actually quite amazing the way things worked out. Despite the total mess that we were in with everything on Monday, by Wednesday evening everything was all set, including my sort of random but very cool cousin giving me his bed since he's moving to the states for a while -- the girl who lived in the apartment who was supposed to be leaving me her bed decided at the last minute that she was taking it, apparently.

By mid-next week we should be more or less in place -- this weekend will require lots of moving (more or less up and down the the stairwell in our building) and next week will require lots of buying (dresser, hopefully finding furniture for our living room, porch, etc.)

In the meantime I am back at work but totally exhausted...have a lot to do but not so much motivated to do it...maybe I'll even manage to sleep some sometime soon?