Squalor - My Vent

A UCI professor of mine used the word 'squalor' quite frequently to describe run down cities and awful apartments.  I always thought the word sounded a little cute, until I started living in squalor three months ago.  This place really is a shithole.  I've gotten to the point where I can overlook the carpet stains from Winschoterdiep's past and I've accepted the fact that my feet haven't - and will not - touch anything barefoot until January.  But as anyone who's ever lived with me knows, I can't stand dirty kitchens.  In fact, I've been known to clean friends' kitchens because I can't stand looking at the filth for a few hours.  So you can imagine how hard it has been for me to live with this everyday:

I don't dare touch this surface

Sinks and counters overflowing with dishes

I should also post a photo of one of our eight sinks, but you might throw up so I'll spare you the image.  At any given time, at least half of our sinks are clogged with food scraps.  Many times people put dirty dishes into the clogged sinks.  Sometimes these sinks stay clogged for days and days on end, creating the pungent aroma of rotting food.  Purchasing sink drain filters would alleviate the problem, but our student manager has not fulfilled this request in the 3 months I've been making it.  Three people are assigned kitchen duty each night.  You're supposed to receive a fine each night you don't do it, but thus far our manager has not fined anyone.  So, some people have started skipping kitchen duty entirely because they know nothing will happen to them.  Worse, our kitchen duty schedule ran out two days ago, meaning no one has been assigned for two nights and surely no one will volunteer to clean that crap.  Even worse, I'm usually assigned first on the kitchen duty schedule, so I'll have a super filthy kitchen to clean.  Most nights I have kitchen duty I'm in a really foul mood and daydream about dousing the kitchen in bleach and lighting it on fire.  At least then it would be sanitized. 

Other shitty things about this place are the cleaning staff, maintenance, laundry rooms, showers, mattresses and internet capabilities.  Yep, that's pretty much everything.  The cleaning staff gets here early and talks SUPER loud and smokes like chimneys all shift long.  And they suck at cleaning.  The bathrooms sometimes seem dirtier after they've "cleaned" them.  I watched one woman use the same rag to first clean the trash can, and then wipe down all our kitchen counters.  I mean props to her for wiping the counters, but using the trash rag was poorly played.  The maintenance is terrrrrrrrribly slow.  We've have a broken fridge sitting in our kitchen for over a month now - a MONTH!  No one opens the fridge door because food has been rotting inside it for weeks, and it is rancid.  So we've just got this huge health hazard hanging out with us each day while we eat.  There are plenty of appliance stores in town that probably offer same day delivery.  UGH, awful.  The housing office decided to re-tile and paint our laundry room a while back.  The laundry room has now been closed for two weeks for remodeling - and it's no more than 200 square feet big.  This small project would not take more than two days in the states.  Once the laundry room is finally finished, they'll probably put the same shitty machines back in there.  So no working dryers and broken washers.  The showers smell like mildew and mold grows on the walls.  The cleaning staff should clean that.  Finding a comfortable mattress here is difficult.  I can feel almost every spring and coil.  Lastly, the internet is wired.  That's right, I have an ethernet cord for my laptop.  We actually pay a lot in rent for this shithole, and it pisses me off that our accommodations are so awful.

The only good thing about this place is the people.  I am very lucky to live on a really fun floor with wonderful people.  They make the squalid conditions at least bearable.  Also, knowing I'll be returning to a fully sanitized house in January gets me through.  I view this time in Winscho as an immunity booster, because lord knows I can't win this filthy battle.