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| The BGU campus Purim party, in which the idea of being PC is not an issue |
As the March month blogger, this is my last post. Although I imagine that tons of people are reading my posts and loving it, I have to admit that I'm not sure if anyone is actually reading this... I'll stay positive. Nonetheless, what can I write about this week? Since my last post, life's been pretty boring. We're in the beginning of Finals season, so a lot of my time is just spent studying, or at least complaining about studying. Same difference.
Ok, I think I know what I'll write about... Story time!
Three days ago, my landlord urgently calls me in the middle of a break in classes. In a combination of bad Hebrew, broken English, and rusty Spanish, we communicate about a plumbing issue. Now, I'm only fluent in one of those languages (I'll let you guess which one), but it seems that water was leaking into the small corner store under my apartment. And, in wonderful Israeli landlord fashion, my landlord lost the key to my apartment and needed me to run back to the apartment to let him see the problem. I was a little late to class after wards, but at least we discovered a clog in the plumbing which nicely gathered all the dirty shower water from me and my neighbors and collected it on my bathroom floor. It's just as lovely as it sounds.
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| The healthy bruschetta we were taught to make in the Nutrition class of Cardiovascular Week. This was followed by Cajun chicken and then Asian salmon salad. |
Although the landlord called a plumber, this is Israel, which means the plumber came today (That's 3 days later, for those of you with short term memory). Don't worry, the water in the bathroom slowly drained, but it's been an awkwardly wet few days; especially whenever me or my neighbors did laundry, cleaned dishes, or showered. In case you're curious, my landlord assured me that the toilet plumbing is a completely different set of pipes and in no way connected to the 'balagan.' So today, the plumber finally came and supposedly cleaned it all out. He'll be back tomorrow to finish – whatever that means? I imagine he took a cigarette break half-way and then just called it an Israeli hard day's work.
And while this story might seem amazingly boring to you, I think it highlights a couple good issues you should think about when in Israel:
1. Don't trust your landlord when he says he called “his guy” to fix something. Call him the next day and every day after wards to make sure he actually did.
2. Appointments, even for plumbing emergencies, will take a few days. That doesn't mean that the plumbers in B7 are busy, it just means that they don't want to see you for a few days. And no matter how simple the task, they'll spread their work out over as long as possible – which is confusing because they don't get paid by the hour :/
3. Quality of life goes down a bit in Beersheva. Flossing my teeth while standing in a dirty puddle of the water I just showered in– been there, done that.
4. Don't try to make friends with the people, or store, below your apartment. I'm quite alright with the cashier of the store complaining to me about the water damage on his ceiling while I'm buying something. But I sure as hell don't want them knowing that it's my bathroom they're pointing and yelling at.
And then finally, don't sign up to write 4 blogs for the school blog when you have no idea what to write- You'll just end up writing about plumbing problems. It's been a pleasure writing these blogs for you all. Next up is Jess. You'll like her, I promise. Shalom. - March blogger of the month, Justin Levinson