Lake Carla

Well, my life is not without adventure… that’s for sure.  Morning, noon, evening = adventure.  Early morning even… last Tuesday at about 4 am, I heard my doorbell ring.  Now, I wasn’t sure what it was at first because I don’t really use my doorbell.  If I’m going to have guests, I know they’re coming and I let them in – no doorbell needed.  I wasn’t entirely sure what the sound was, since I was fast asleep, but I thought it must have been a mistake so I ignored it.  I then noticed that it was raining pretty hard out, so I reached up and shut the window, and went back to bed.  Not a minute later, I heard the doorbell again, this time followed by a sharp knock.  I knew someone was there, and if they were going to be persistent, it would be a problem, so I decided to deal with it.  I kind of woke up on my way to the door, and as I opened the door, it hit me why my crazy neighbor was at my door.  It wasn’t raining outside, and my feet were wet… my sink was shooting water into my kitchen creating what I deemed “lake Carla.”  The first thing I could think of saying was “boszmeg!” which is basically “f%&k” in Hungarian.  (I pointed out to my students that I should get points for waking up and immediately thinking in Hungarian right?”  I walked back to my kitchen, with my crazy neighbor still in the doorway.  I stepped over the threshold into the kitchen, and as I did so, I felt a vibrating shock on my foot.  Shit.  I had appliances plugged in that were sitting in water.  Ok, so I had basically two choices.  I could either suffer death by crazy neighbor, or death by electrocution.  I chose electrocution.  I walked quickly through the water, and because I had dealt with the sink so much recently, I knew exactly how to shut the water off.  I returned to the door, getting another shock on the way – it only happened near the doorway, but it was disturbing non-the-less – and said “bocs” (“oops” in Hungarian) to my neighbor and shut the door.  She was in the middle of indicating that it had dripped into her apartment, as I closed the door – I knew why she was there, but I didn’t have time for her then.  I returned to the kitchen and began immediately cursing Justin.  After all, he was the one who installed the sink, so it HAD to be his fault right?  Well, it turns out it wasn’t his fault, but at 4:30 in the morning, I had to have someone to blame.  It was also easy to blame him since he was at home in the states on leave, and couldn’t even be woken up to be bitched at.  Ugh.  So, I began to gather the water using towels and sponges and a bucket.  I did this for over an hour before I had just damp tiles left.  In the mean time, Boo was going crazy.  She was afraid of the water, but was meowing to see what I was doing.  I brought her into the kitchen and put her on the kitchen table, so she could be there and see that in fact, everything was okay.  She sat for a while and must have gotten bored, because she jumped off the table into Lake Carla, and of course got shocked on the way.  I am assuming that the shock was a bit more for her little body than it was for mine since I’m quite a bit bigger than she is.  She flew out of the kitchen so fast that I thought for a minute she was a speed boat based on the wake she had made.  I don’t think she liked the water since she took a good couple of days to return, probably with the fear that she’d have to swim while in there. 

I cleaned up as best I could, and headed to school.  I told the teachers what had happened, and they became very concerned.  I told them I was going to go to OBI (the hardware store) and find the part that had broken, and rest-assured, I could fix it on my own.  They weren’t convinced but agreed to let me try before summoning the school fix-it man to come to my apartment. (remembering that he never came the first time, I had more confidence in myself).  After I brought a nice card, chocolates and flowers to the crazy neighbor lady's house, I set out for OBI with the part in hand, convinced that I would have a victorious run to the store.  After about 10 minutes of staring, and three employees later (one of them broke out into “Angolol” clear across the store – “English!” looking for the one employee who spoke English- who never really showed up) I found the part.  I was excited and determined to be successful.  I also was on a mission to fix my oscillating fan.  One of the prongs on the plug broke off, so I was going to re-wire the plug and it would work splendidly right?  I found only a full cord, not just the plugs, so I thought “what the heck – here goes nothing.”  I definitely struck out with the sink- the part wasn’t securing tightly and kept leaking.  Oh well.  I can still be successful with the fan right?  I got out my handy 6 screwdriver set from TESCO and laid the standing fan down to unscrew the part where the cord connected to the fan.  I had three Phillips and three flat head screwdrivers – I was ready.  Until I saw that the screws had a triangular head.  What?  Triangles?  What the hell is going on in this country?  Two major defeats.  Chalk it up.  UGH. 

The next day, Erika spoke with the maintenance man, and apparently put the fear of God into him because he was at my apartment finishing up when I got home from school that day.  He also told me that he fixed my toilet, which I knew was leaking, but never really paid much attention to.  OK – so the only thing I have left (for now) is the fan.  I returned to OBI to try and find a triangular screwdriver.  The woman working thought I was crazy when I asked, so I went to plan B – try to actually find the plug.  Well, I came upon plan B after I called my parents from the store and asked what to do.  Yes, I placed a long distance call over a fan.  They told me that there had to be just plugs and I had probably missed them.  I found one and was on my way, but not before checking out the ceiling fans that were now there, which hadn’t been there three weeks ago.  Hmmm…. They were a good deal, but I was focusing on the sink and fan today.  I returned home and successfully rewired the plug and now have a working fan, sink and toilet.  And, an additional fan that I bought in case I couldn’t fix the one J