Who turned off the water?

Living in Tuzla has definitely come with its share of surprises and challenges. Our first morning here I woke up early to turn on our hot water heater so we could all take showers, 30 minutes later we still had nothing but ice cold water. I'm a little embarrassed to admit how long it took three grad students to find the water shut off valve! Problem solved, right? Wrong!

Today I stumbled out of bed to the kitchen for my first cup of instant coffee (yum) to get the day started off right. Surprise, surprise - no water at all. Talk about a rude awakening! I spoke to my supervisor (who set up the apartments for us) expecting her to be outraged, instead she informed me that this happens often in Tuzla due to water restrictions. We should prepare for this by keeping a few buckets of water around. I looked so pretty at work! I'm just glad I'm still in my procrastination stage and haven't started running yet.

Friday night we went out downtown for the first time. Since Savi is from Argentina, we had to check out the Latin Flamenco club (silly me, I always thought flamenco came from Spain). We walked up there only to find a band sitting around playing and no one else. I was on the verge of turning around when they all got up to invite the American girls in to listen. Little awkward! It turned out to be one of those extremely random experiences you can't forget. They were all great guys and I think they liked practicing their English.

Both of my placements went really well this week. Everyone seems very welcoming and excited to work with us. I'm still not too sure what my role will be as this week was spent more on introductions than anything else. I let you all know more about them next week!