last night i had dinner at my parents house. they were telling me some stories about what life was like in russia when they lived there that really made me realize just how lucky we are to be living here in america now. i guess in russia, a lot of people used to live in communal houses. these were large houses that had large rooms that connected to a kitchen and bathroom. but, instead of each large room being a bedroom used by one person, each of the rooms would actually be used for a whole family. so, basically, several families would all live together in one of these houses. there was no living rooms or bedrooms or whatnot… your family would just get *1* room to itself. the whole family would sleep in the same room (usually using rollout beds or cots for the kids). the same table that would be used for the kids homework etc, would also be the table that dinner and breakfast was eaten on. the whole family was just crammed together all the time.<\/p>\n
how crazy is that?? but there’s more! basically, the government allotted 3 square meters (imagine a five foot by five foot square) of space per person. so you would live there as a family w\/ your parents. when you got married, your wife would just have to move in and live w\/ you and your parents. then you’d have kids, still in that same small room!! when the family was large enough that there was less than 3 square meters per person in that room, then you could put your name on a list and the government would find you a new room in another communal house where you could finally move out from your parents. unfortunately, it was a slow process. sometimes it would take up to 10 years for you to move out from the time you first got on the list.<\/p>\n
i was so shocked when i heard all that!! sheesh, and i’m used to america, where most people can move out the second they turn 18 and afford to live on their own etc etc. all of it really made me realize just how amazing america must have seemed to my parents when they first moved here. it must really have been a magical place…<\/p>\n
-v<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
last night i had dinner at my parents house. they were telling me some stories about what life was like in russia when they lived there that really made me realize just how lucky we are to be living here in america now. i guess in russia, a lot of people used to live in … Continue reading “communal living”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}