The Easy Way...or the French Way.

Am I being biased, or is everything this hard back home?

Where do I begin...

Two days after we moved into the apartment, everything inside fell apart. The hot plate on the stove top wouldn't turn off, the gas was leaking for the other stove top heaters, the microwave wouldn't shut off for two minutes after it had already stopped. The landlady came over to investigate, and brought us a TV which she didn't know how to connect. So we got the concierge to come help us. After an hour and a half, the oven was torn open and shoved to one side of the kitchen, the microwave was in pieces in the hallway, the electricity and gas were shut off, and wires were flying next to the TV. Then I had to leave for lunch with my french family, who had been waiting for me outside while all of this was going on.

When I got home, we found that we still had no electricity, the hot water was gone, and we had no working oven, stove, or microwave. But we had french TV! (which BTW we did not even want, but the landlady insisted we get it, because «how will you know things about the world, like the weather?» which is funny, because the weather can change drastically here in five minutes...the only way to know what the weather is doing is to go outside.)

The next day they came back and everything seemed fixed. The landlady brought us a new microwave, an extra fan, and she even bought me a teddy bear keychain!!

Things were not fixed. At night we realized the stove tops still weren't working and we still didn't have hot water. So for dinner, I attempted to make a frozen, microwavable «Creole» meal from the grocery store. You would think the instructions would be very basic, even though I didn't understand most of it:

Somehow, this «easy french meal» became an absolute disaster. It exploded in the microwave, leaving red creole juice everywhere. I was practically sobbing in the sink when my roommate walked in to laugh at me for a good period of time. Can't ANYTHING just be easy?!?!

The next day, it was Sunday. I now can tell you that I know what the world post-apocalypse will look like. It will look like the center village of Saint-Denis on a Sunday. Not ONE person was outside. Stores were so closed they were practically borded up. While walking down the street..completely alone...we ran into the only other people alive...our other American friends from the program. Apparently none of us got the memo about the world ending.

Needless to say, the concierge was not opening his door on Sunday. I had reached my breaking point of not being able to shower, so I angrily took the coldest shower of my life, cursing everyone on Reunion Island. Then I tried to wash my clothes in the washing machine, which we also cannot figure out. No matter what we do, the clothes come out soaking wet with gobs of soap on them. So I just washed them by hand in the sink.

By that point, I was pretty irrated, so we decided to go for a walk. Later, after MUCH discussion on the phone with the landlady (to which she could never give us any help) my roommate found a switch on her own that turned back on the hot water. Why the landlady did not know about this switch is beyond me. She also doesn't know how the washing machine works. We also learned that the elecricity for the stove top would never be turned back on, because they couldn't figure out why the hot plate wouldn't turn off. So to use the stove top, we have to turn on the gas valve and then put a lit match on the stove top to start the fire. This sounds disasterous but so far we haven't lit ourselves on fire. Yet.

So on Monday, with a warm shower to start my day and clean clothes on my back, I was in a much better mood. It was the day I had to run around town to go to my radiology appointment and my dr. appointment so I can get free french healthcare (yay!)

I got to the radiologie place super early because the French people scheduled my appointments within a half an hour from each other, which would be an impossibility even if it didn't take me 30 minutes alone just to walk from one place to the other. I should have looked up some key words before the appointment because it was super awkward. She was telling me to take off my shirt, I think, but I had like three shirts on and a bra, and I wasn't exactly sure if she was telling me to take off everything or to take off everything except the bra. It would've been seriously awkward if she was telling me to leave something on and I walked in totally naked. And it would have been equally awkward if I walked in there with clothes on when they were supposed to be all off, since she explained it to me very slowly and a million times. (Which couldn't have helped me since I simply didn't know the vocab.) Anyway I got through it and got out just in time to walk to my next appointment. Halfway to the next place, I got curious and pulled out my Xrays. Except they were the Xrays of a Mr. Ouahhabi, who is not me. Bravo.

Mr. Ouahhabi also seems to be in good health.

Luckily, I rememberd Mr. Ouahhali, and since he was alone and seemed to be my age, I was hoping we were doing the same thing and that I would run into him at the Dr. Appointment. Then we would be able to switch xrays.

Luckily, that is exactly what happened. I did not know what my back-up plan was, because the radiologie place was SO far away and kind of in a sketchy area. I was not looking forward to marching back there again OR having to reschedule my dr. appointment. Which actually I could've done because I waited for the next two hours for the doctor to «see» me...which meant he took my blood pressure and weighed me and signed a paper saying I was healthy enough to stay in France.

These are my ribs.

So after all that...success! We have a mostly functional living space and it should only be weeks before I get health care! Then I can accidentally light myself on fire every night!