It was a bit of a surprise to realise that we have upgraded parts of our life by living in Ramallah. Most notably, our flat is very nice and we have enjoyed walking everywhere so far - and of course the weather is great right now.
Although rent is surprisingly expensive for an area that is frought with so many problems, our flat is more than double the size of our flat in London, and it has everything that we need. Now I feel a bit stupid taking my Nutribullet blender in an attempt to preserve some of my home comforts. I cannot wait to use the orange press and we also have a very decent juicer.
The only problem with a big flat is keeping it tidy. We visited Al's brother's flat and it was so clean I couldn't believe it. Now I'm paranoid that people will just drop by our place (as they do here - no advance phone calls) and consider it to be untidy. Of course it is both Al's and my responsibility to keep things tidy, but I want to avoid being judged in the more 'traditional' way that I cannot adequately provide for my man or manage a household. At least I can make good arabic coffee.
Our flat is located a 5 minute walk from what is considered the city centre. The building is only a couple of years old and built to very high standards. The walls are very thick and we hear no noise from neighbours, although we do hear noise from a nearby mosque. The call for prayers started at 4am during my first night here.
Our flat is around 120 square metres with two bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and 2 balconies.
This is the view from our balcony. Ramallah is populated this densely pretty much everywhere and free-standing houses are only possible for very few priviliged families.
The lounge room with modern furniture and a surround sound speaker system. It seems like a lot of television programmes are in English with Arabic subtitles.
A BIG kitchen.
The equipment in the kitchen is a DREAM.
The master bedroom, although the study is the same size.
The corridor. This is probably a boring photo but I wanted to show how big it is. :)
