First Week Funnies

I purchased a used tv from some local missionaries my first night here.

I double-checked everything with them about how to safely hook up my Wii.

I went home and plugged my Wii in (properly) and knocked out my power, twice! Remember that this was my first night. I had fun finding the fuse box.

Did I mention that I live in an old building?

The second or third day I was here I decided to walk to the school. I could see it from one of my windows, so I figured it was time to make the journey.

I turned on the wrong street and ended up far away from the school.

I found somebody who could speak some English. She didn’t know how to tell me how to get to BFA, so she asked if she could take me there. So, I totally got in a strangers car, haha. I probably wouldn’t have ever done that in the states.

Her name was Iris.

Yesterday I was determined to find a place to hang my ENO hammock. I hiked all over the place and never found 2 good trees to do the job.

I came back to my apartment and hung it between two posts in the front yard. It turns out that my landlord was downstairs reading the paper and seemed worried as he watched me climb into the hammock. His expression didn’t change much as the wood began to creek. It was awkward.

Today I ran down stairs to get something. When I came back upstairs, to my apartment, my key wouldn’t turn in the lock. No matter what I did, the key wouldn’t budge. There I was, in my socks, standing outside my locked door.

It was about 9pm. My landlord does not speak very much English and I didn’t even know if he was home. I was trying to decide if it would be totally weird to walk to the school barefoot. It’s at least half a mile. Even if I were to get there barefooted without any problems, I had no guarantee that there would be somebody there to help me. So, I thought about going to a nearby missionary’s house. Once again, she was at least half a mile away.

Luckily my landlord was home. Unluckily, his key didn’t work either. He laughed and tried to tell me in the little bit of English he spoke that he would get Mr. Schmidt from downstairs. Mr. Schmidt came up and HE couldn’t get the key to work. The landlord nervously laughed some more. Eventually they had to take the door knob off. Once they manually opened the door, the key worked fine. Nobody seemed to know why it happened. I guess it was just the chance to have another funny story.  The funny part to me is that the locked door was not the annoyance. It was the two German men standing in my doorway talking about possible causes, in German, for 20 minutes. I just stood there.

Once again, it was awkward.