Desperate Times

sometimes i feel like alex and i are like harry and lloyd from dumb and dumber. living together in a former communist central european country where we don’t speak the language with only each other to count on, when it comes down to it. i realized this yesterday, which was day three of the great unexplained power outage.

at one point i sat there in my hoodie that doesn’t zip anymore thinking, okay. we have no food. we have no money. my employer is two days late with the paycheck. we have no hot water… we have no heat… my phone is out of minutes….

“our pets’ heads are falling off!”

this paints a pretty bleak picture. but it’s more laughably pathetic sounding than it is a real life interruption. and hey, it couldn’t be bleaker than last december/january though: running out of money, we have no jobs, rent costs an arm and a leg, we may or may not be able to be legal in the country we’re in. so, as you can see, we are on the up-and-up!

it is quite difficult to get by sometimes. living here in this building so far, we’ve had plenty of things go wrong. door knob breaking (x3), hot water not working (x2), internet going out (x4) are just some of the things that have happened in the past 9 months. you have to rely on and trust that people will help you and not forget about you, as we live in a part of the country where you can’t depend on anyone to have knowledge of english. it’s a plus, not a given like it might be in prague. we can’t just pick up the phone and call the electric company. that being said, patience is a common theme.

with this current outage, it’s really nothing we can’t handle. sure it may be 65 degrees in here and dropping and i have had to heat the kettle for a “bath” before, it’s sort of an adventure that makes us more resilient….. although an adventure that i hope resolves itself soon.

today is day four. i have been told the hot water has now been fixed, and i was paid this morning. so that’s something. in other news, I LOVE TEACHING ENGLISH here, it’s frickin’ fabulous. and alex just made $50 last night in two hours teaching children in a small village about 25km away. the problems seem so small when life is good otherwise.

…

ten minutes after this was published, the power turned back on.