I've moved out of the hotel where I was staying into a cheaper place just off Karada. We can rent it by the month for $25 USD (I've rooming now with a Canadian woman). I call it the Clown House because a small circus troupe was staying there called "Circus 2 Iraq." It's a wreck of a place with a smell all it's own (I don't think it is fair to just blame the clowns for this).

Here are some if it's features: A tiny kitchen (tiny fridge, mismatched dishes, couple of burners), two bedrooms with old airconditioners and two lumpy beds in each room (one sheet, one ratty blanket per bed), a livingroom, access to a dingy balcony strung with wires and clotheslines, unreliable electricity and water, dark blue shag carpeting in which things seemed to have crawled into and died and an apartment manager who seems very nice but who everyone warns us might try to scam us. Ah there is no place like home.