What a Week! Lessons from MOLD

I don't even know where to begin to update you on this week. I will try to spare you some details. Overall, I feel like this is home now. I feel comfortable walking all over, and my neighborhood and area seems normal now. Kinda hard to describe, but several times this week when I walking, I just got a sense, of "yah, this is normal, this is my life, this isn't weird, or unusual anymore." Which is good!

This week has been busy! We have had some issues with mold in our apt. The issues started about a month ago. I have an allegory for our mold problems for you. When the mold first appeared on the couches, we were a little surprised. We thought, that is weird, unusual, kinda comical. Where did that come from? But we thought we did not have time to clean it right then, and were not quite sure the appropriate way to clean it, so it got put off. We had the intention of asking people here how they cleaned their mold, but it seems you never remember to ask someone about mold when you see them. After about a week, I finally emailed my supervisor, to ask her advice. Then by the time she responded and I went and bought what she suggested, I am sure a week had past. Additionally, I noticed that puffy water rings were appearing behind the paint in my room, and several spots were mold had broken through the paint. I took my supervisors advice and cleaned the room and the couches. And then the rain came, and the rains came down and the mold grew more, and the rains came down and the mold more! After about 15 days of rain the mold reappeared, bigger and more colorful (we have black, green, gray, light blue, mint green, and a lovely pussy yellow) than every before. At this point we began to realize what a huge problem mold is. There is no simple fix. It takes time, and work, and dedication to getting it all taken care of. And of course, living overseas adds a different twist to everything. We had to wait for our landlady to return from France to have her come look at the apartment. Then she had have her brother-in-law, come look at it, and the next day bring a professional. So the mold kinda blew up this week in our faces, what was kinda comical at first, is now a huge problem. My roomate has been sick this week (don't know if it is from the mold, but the mold can only hinder our health). And I have been talking to many people through the whole process to get the problem addressed. We have had many people over to see the apartment, so we have to try to keep it looking decent despite the mold. I have learned alot more Arabic through talking with people about this. Nash (mold) is not in our Arabic/english dictionary! So I had to try to explain mold to people and talk around the word. Think about how would you describe mold, in a way that someone who does not speak English could figure it out? (humidity, water, not dripping, on wall, on couches, old bread, many colors, grow....can't even draw a picture!) All that to say that the mold problem is being addressed, but they must first figure out the problem with our neighbor's balcony and correct that before they can work on our place, because their balcony (they think) is the source of the water. This is a common problem here, but ours is definitly a more severe case than others. Our landlady is very upset, because they had just had the place redone, and repainted before we moved in, so it is nice to have her addiment about correcting the problem. I learned a lesson from this mold. How many times do we let a "bad habit" into our lives, thinking it is interesting or different, or maybe even comical at first. And then it continues. You have the intentions of stopping, but never really do. You might stop for a little bit, but then find yourself back in the "bad habit." Eventually, bad habits tend to blow up in your face, as our mold has done this week. You think if we had taken the issue seriously, addressed it, and taken the time to correct it in the beginning, it could have been nipped in the bud, but now all the problems are compounded. In our mold case, now we have to throw away our couches. It takes a couple of days to get things together so someone can get a car, and find a place to take them, cause we don't dare give away moldy couches. We can't have people over to our place, and we were expecting about 20 people for a get-together this weekend, but now we had to ask to have all the people go to someone else's house, with little notice. We even got scared, when my roomate got sick and slept somewhere else.

Sorry, I said I would spare you details, and that really is the spared details version, cause everything is complicated here. So this week has been very busy, but I definitly feel that I am adjusting and belong here, which is a big praise! And don't worry, I am not sick, and my roomate is feeling better. But I wanted to share that, so you would know that life is not always glamourous here, and you can learn many lessons, from things you would not expect.

I would also like to add that the rain has stopped for the last 2 days, and it has been HALU KTEER (VERY NICE) here! We are able to air out our apt, which it desperately needed, and for the first time in weeks, I was able to do laundry, and let it air dry outside, instead of inside! And it dried within hours! I have NEVER been so thankful for clothes that were dried so stiffly!

My roomate has taken pictures, so hopefully I can share those with you soon! We missed alot of good picture opportunities in the process, but I think if you could see it, it might make more sense.