I'm getting better at driving .. still nowhere near having a sense of direction out here (where's my mountains to the west??) but I'm starting to get there ..
So I need to tell you about yesterday .. short version: yesterday had a few "hiccups" and umm, we're not moving into our villa tomorrow.
Long version .. well, here ya go...
After I dropped the girls off at school, Max and I went on a quest to a store called "Geant" which is a lot like Walmart .. it has appliances at good prices, so I went there to find all of our appliances (we need EVERYTHING .. the villa comes with nothing). I picked out all of the stuff in about 30 min .. I normally would follow Mark's lead with researching prices, brands, etc. but out here, I'm just kind of picking the middle priced items and going with it .. I just want to get it purchased, delivered and installed. SO .. I picked out the appliances and went to pay and BAM .. like a few other times, the card was declined, and I was unable to make the purchase. Our bank keeps flagging our purchases .. we can't change our address until it becomes permanent, so blah blah blah .. fighting with a computer system to get things done. The first time it happened was at the grocery store when I had a cart full of food .. that was awesome. (I was able to run down to the currency exchange and turn my dollars into dirhams and make my purchase that day). ANYWAYS .. so I didn't make the appliance purchase, but wrote down everything that I had picked out .. so I can just go back when the card is nice again and get everything underway. SOO .. then Max and I walked the mall a bit .. and look what we found:
Max will have his first class on Thursday .. you should have seen how excited he was!
Sooo .. after we signed up for Little Gym, we still had some time to kill so I decided to try driving to the new house/villa. SOO, I plugged in the ol' address and headed there. When I arrived, I noticed the front door was cracked open, so I decided to go in and see how it looked .. I was expecting all of the touch up paint to be done and for cleaners to maybe be there doing their last clean ... yeah, I should have lowered my expectations. A LOT.
When I went in the front door (Max was asleep in the car), I heard water running, and water was ALL.OVER.THE.FLOOR .. I'm talkin' 1/2 an inch .. It was coming from upstairs, traveling down the stairs, and pooling down on the main floor.
So, I have to tell you that all of the floors here are tile .. so it's not like carpet was damaged or anything .. and there are drains in all of the floors, too .. so it could have been the cleaning crew .. but not likely .. I started saying, "hello??" over and over .. wondering it anyone was there .. and then went upstairs. What I saw was water spraying out of the little sprayer thing that hangs out between the bidet and the toilet (I guess that's how they get cleaned up out here!) I quickly turned it off.
It turns out that the water was turned back on on Sunday, so it had been spraying and spraying all day and night until I "just happened" to drive over on Monday morning!! I turned off the faucets and immediately called our agent .. they are on top of it .. but WOW! Here are more pictures of what I saw ..
you can see where the water was coming down..
Sooo, there ya have it .. and honestly, it's going to be fine .. i'm grateful for tile floors. :) I'll keep you posted with what happens next .. but there is the reason that we are not moving in tomorrow .. I called IKEA and Pan Emirates furniture to tell them to hold off on the delivery for a bit ... I'm hopeful for next Monday .. Monday needs to redeem itself, eh? :)
The rest of the day was great .. so I can't give Monday that much of a hard time .. I went and picked up Brooke from school, and Max, even though he had slept for about an hour in the car already, went back to sleep at the hotel for another hour and a half! I'm so proud of him! Then we picked up Paige and after telling her the story of what happened at the house, decided to go back to the house to see it again. The kids ended up just wanting to PLAY in the backyard .. they found a watering can and a bucket and it was if they had just found the best two toys in the world .. they just got busy playing, so I let them ..
As they were playing, we heard the Call to Prayer coming loudly through the speakers at the Mosque that is 5 minutes away from our house. That'll take some getting used to -- but to me, for now, it's just another way to embrace an international/multicultural experience. I'm sure we'll barely notice it as time passes. But I do have to say that it was a shock!
After playing in our future backyard, we walked over to the park and played .. I really, really love our neighborhood .. I can't wait to show it off! It will be so nice when that's our regular after school activity!
I have more pictures to share from the past week .. but this blog is LOOONG enough! I'll do another blog of pictures and events from last week soon.
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