Flat Fun

About a week ago, I noticed a hissing noise I had never heard before in our toilet room where our dinosaur hot-water heater is located. I thought it accompanied a faint smell of gas, so I decided to turn it off coming into our flat. Upon my housemate's return a few days later, we turned it back on to make sure I wasn't just imagining things. We heard the noise, but no smell. She desperately wanted a hot shower ... so we lit it and ... BOOM! The aluminum piping that channels the burned gas out exploded!

In the next week, we made appointment after appointment until 5 days later an "usta" (general workman) finally arrived. What should have taken a father-son team 1 hour took them 5 hours with lots of running up and down (4 floors of stairs). Their first measurement of the new piping was wrong and after trying to stretch it to fit, they finally went back for more. But then the supplier was closed (at 6pm ... strange country). By the time the father returned to say they would have to come back tomorrow, my housemate had been communicating, in a begging sort of way, that we needed to have hot water today! So when the father suggested they finish tomorrow, the son said "They need to wash their hair. Go home and find something that works!" (liberally translated) So after much frustration, persistence, time and tea our hot-water heater is fixed ... for the time being :)

Also a guy came the day before the "usta" to do a "soap test" to find the leak in our pipe that I was hearing, but he couldn't find one (and charged us for it!) However, when the Father-son ustas came, they found a long, thin crack in a pipe that they replaced ... and covered the not-so-well fitting seam with a sort of sticky paper! (yikes!)

Let's just say the quality of work here is a "just get by" mentality and it makes me trust my Heavenly Father daily for His protection even more!