Home Improvements

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Imagine that your bathroom consisted of all the basic components: sink, toilet, and shower. Not much imagination required, right? Factor in a shower that shares a floor with all the other components. Now, imagine that the shower drain is so malfunctional that even military showers are too luxurious to be feasible. For if your shower exceeds 1.24 minutes, you are sure to have water over the entire bathroom floor, which you must then squeegee and dry after your shower, waiting patiently for the drain to receive the water you send its way.

For about a month, this was our plight, which we took in stride. I was remembering that old prayer, "Help me accept the things I cannot change..."

Then, good ole' Boris came to our rescue. The tenant below us was getting water stains on their ceiling! Imagine that. So one day Boris came in with the plumber. This guy did a great job fixing the drain. He caulked around the drain and the wall. He left a terrible mess and it wasn't the neatest caulk job I've ever seen, but I'm not complaining, especially since Boris paid the plumber, not us. (Unlike American customs, here repairs are normally paid for by the tenant, not the property owner.) Yay! No more floods.

Not long after this wonderful event, some friends of ours bought a refrigerator for our apartment. This was icing on the cake (a whole-grain cake, of course). From my perspective, this new fridge brought home improvements up to a whole new level.

Our apartment came equipped with a dorm-size refrigerator. (That is the only size fridge that will fit into our pint-sized apartment.) But it had serious issues. It liked to freeze food, rather than simply keep it cool as normal refrigerators tend to do. It was possible to regulate it, but it would have required that we turn it on a few hours every day, then remember to turn it off, lest the fridge morph into a freezer.

The school has a very small refrigerator, so we stored a few things in it, trying to leave the students room for their beverages and food. In addition to the fact that we had to limit what we stored in their fridge, this was simply not convenient for us. Getting something out of this little fridge entailed unlocking our apartment door, crossing the hall to turn on the hall light, locking the apartment door, unlocking the hall door, locking the hall door, walking down one flight of stairs, unlocking the school door, retrieving the needed item from the refrigerator, then repeating the locking/unlocking procedure in reverse.

I promise - I was NOT complaining, but I happened to mention our refrigerator situation to our new friend Charlotte. I was simply discussing. After all, it's just one of those things. When you live in a foreign country, rather than fight what you cannot change, you simply accept certain things as normal. We have learned to adjust to inconveniences while maintaining a good attitude and smile (most of the time, anyway...knock on wood...). Evangelizing for a decade or so has taught me that being productive sometimes requires being personally inconvenienced. At this point, adjusting ourselves as necessary is just par for the course. We don't have to love our situation, but learning to live with it is much easier than being discontent and unhappy.

The long and short of this story is that the next thing we knew, James and Charlotte had ordered a new refrigerator for the apartment. The delivered it last Saturday and since then, life has been even better than before. Now, when we get a craving for a snack of hummus on toast, we don't have to leave the apartment!!

You know, it doesn't take much to make me happy. I was happy before, in spite of being inconvenienced by the lack of a functioning refrigerator. But now...I am triple happy. Thanks, James and Charlotte! May you never lack a functioning refrigerator!!