Fun in the Flat, or Adventures in the Apartment :-)

Living alone definitely has its pros and cons. Generally, I truly am happy with the flat and living by myself. I thought it might be lonely, boring, or unsafe, but really...it’s not. I like the privacy, and I have enough friends and close contacts that I don’t really lack for social opportunities.

But let me elaborate on the negative parts first. :-D While I occasionally miss my family, I honestly don’t really get homesick. I don’t mean that in a “haha-I’m-rid-of-my-family” way though! I love ‘em, but between keeping in touch and having such an amazing time here, I just don’t deal with homesickness. BUT...

But I definitely miss having a dad or brother around to deal with gross and/or scary household issues! For example, if I see a bug or something, I have to deal with it. I can’t run to a family member saying, “EWW! Kill it kill it kill it!”. Nope. Either I deal with it, or it stays there! The most traumatic experience for me was dealing with mice. Yes, mice. Don’t get me wrong, the flat is well-kept. There are stray cats around the neighborhood. The landlady, Rosa, is a great landlady. She was shocked when I told her about the problem and quickly took care of it. But let me elaborate. :-)

I should have suspected long ago, but it took me awhile. I noticed random holes in the trash bags in the kitchen, but I kept dismissing it as sharp objects in the trash. Huh...another can of corn cut a hole? That’s weird. Sometimes, I’d even see pieces of the trash bag on the ground. Huh. That’s weird. But a mouse? Nah. And then shortly before I left for Valencia, I actually thought I saw one under the sink. I charged out of the kitchen making general freaking-out noises, waited a few minutes, came back with a broom, and saw nothing. I dismissed it as my imagination and went on with my life. After Valencia, however, things became more obvious. I was watching TV one evening (which is in the same room as the kitchen, but on the other side) and fell asleep on the couch (something I do back in Norwood as well :-P). I woke up around 1:30am and started to stumble to my room when I heard distinct scratching noises under the kitchen sink. Suddenly, I was wide awake! :-) What did I do? I ran to my room and tried to sleep, praying that the whole mouse issue would somehow disappear. The next morning, I hesitantly went to the kitchen and looked at the bag of trash I had taken out from the “garbage can” (more like a bucket) the night before in order to put it in the trash area outside. The bag that distinctly had NO holes the night before had a perfect mouse-size hole chewed through, with the little bag pieces scattered on the floor. Yuck! That’s when I really wished I had my dad or one of my brothers around. :-D

I wrote a note to Rosa (the landlady) explaining the situation, and that evening when I got back from teaching, we met up and talked about what to do. She went with a guy (her brother? I’m not really sure) to assess the situation (I conveniently went to the library. Haha! To reference yet another British series, there’s one called “From Larkrise to Candleford.” In one episode, two sisters have a mouse in their house or store. One stands on a chair screaming “Mouse! Mouse! Mouse!” while the other whacks the mouse to its demise with a broom. I discovered that I would be the one shouting, “Mouse! Mouse! Mouse!”).

After I came back, Rosa showed me a small box placed under the sink. You couldn’t touch it with your hands, so I’m assuming that it had poison or something in it. Anyway, it wasn’t too long before I thought I heard a quiet “mouse moan” one evening. It could’ve been my imagination, but I don’t think it was. I think it crawled into the box and met its doom. What did I do? One, I DIDN’T go anywhere near the kitchen or sink. Two, I actually got a little teary as I thought about the poor mouse who just picked the wrong place to invade (yeah, I watch too many Disney and Pixar shows!). When I finally had the courage to check under the sink a day later, I saw some fur peaking out of the box thing. Whew. The mouse was dead. But now what? Do I get rid of it? Do I bug Rosa about it? Once again, I wished Dad was there to deal with it. :-P After several days of letting the mouse rot under the sink, I finally grabbed two garbage bags, opened the cupboard door to the sink, prayed, closed my eyes, whimpered like a sissy, picked up the box, shoved it into another trash bag, and then disposed of everything outside in the dumpster. Yay! :-) As far as I can tell, there was just one. Let’s hope there aren’t any others!

But God uses even icky circumstances to build character, and the whole situation became one of those “Well, if I can deal with that, then I can handle this problem!” sort of things. :-)

That was by far the most unpleasant thing to happen in the flat. The second most unpleasant one? Another time I wish I had my Dad or brothers around to deal with everything? The Night of the Battery Charger. OooOooOoo...

European electric chargers are different from the US, so I brought a converter/adaptor with me for an iPod and the battery charger. It works great with the iPod, so I assumed it would be fine with the charger. One night (of course, it would be night. All scary things happen at night), I randomly decided to see if the battery charger worked (note to self: try these things out in the daytime). I plugged it into the converter, stuck it in the outlet, and then...poof! ALL of the lights went out. Just like that. Suddenly, I was surrounded by darkness, convinced I fried the electricity in the entire building...maybe even the neighborhood. I immediately thought of a film where a woman from the States tries to charge her phone in a village in the Scotland/Ireland area. She put it in the outlet, and ZAP! Everything turned dark. As she complained to the owner of the establishment, “You just fried my blackberry!” he retorted back, “You just fried the whole village!” Anyway, so that’s what I thought: I just fried the whole village! But I noticed that the TV, fridge, stove, etc. still worked. It was literally only the lights that wouldn’t work. I grabbed my pocketknife light and went to bed. :-) The next morning, I knocked on Rosa’s door and explained the situation. Well, I didn’t explain what I did. I just said that something happened with the lights. :-D Hee! She just looked at those black handle thingies that control lights and stuff (you know, the stuff that dads and brothers do in the basement with flashlights when the power goes out? Girls just aren’t supposed to deal with it. It’s the law.), flipped a switch, and all was fine. Huh! I thanked her, relieved that it was a minor problem, and proceeded to go about my day. Almost. I decided to try the charger ONE more time, and as you guessed, the lights went out again. But I just flipped the switch again, and everything was fine. I was sure of one thing though: I would NOT use that charger again!

I looked at the voltage things before I left, and everything seemed fine. So in my mind, there are three possibilities why the charger didn’t work: the voltage really was different and I read only a portion of what I should have read, the charger is too strong for the converter (it has a small fan/motor and charges batteries within 15 minutes...pretty intense!), or I need to put the converter on another setting. But personally? It’s not worth the risk. I just told Laura about it, and I rather conveniently was headed to Reus with Javi that evening anyway. So I just bought one there for some 20 euros, and everything’s been fine. Whew!

Anyway, those were the two hardest things to deal with alone. :-) Other than that and the occasional bug, everything’s been going really well in the flat! I cook, but it’s nothing dramatic. It’s just silly cooking elaborate meals for yourself. I was quite proud of myself figuring out the washing machine with Spanish instructions, and I do about a load or two a week. But unlike my patient mother, I just shove everything in and use the same setting for everything. Ha! I haven’t had any problems, and I’m a firm believer that washing instructions are overrated. :-P I’m finally used to using a drying rack as well!

I try to keep everything organized, and the hardest part is definitely the dining room table. I have soooo many papers! School, touristy things, scrap paper, important documents, etc. I clear off the table and sort through everything at least once a week, and it always gets cluttered again. :-) But other than that, I try to live in an organized manner. :-) Mostly.

I did take pictures and a 3-minute video of the flat, which I hope to share sometime. Laura’s lending me her laptop, and I was able to download pictures. They’re slowly being put up on Facebook, but internet access is...well, temperamental. :-) I hope to have something up on the blog eventually!

I think that’s about it for apartment living. I watch TV occasionally, study Spanish and Catalan, listen to my iPod, read, memorize Scripture, prepare lessons, organize my mound of papers, and use the laptop in my spare time. Oh, and I did have a pet fly in my flat for several days. :-) I can’t deal with mice, but I didn’t have the heart to kill my little fly friend. I kept trying to catch him (her?) and let him out on the terrace, but it was almost like he was happy in the flat. Hee hee! So I let him fly around, play in the trash, and sit on my hand and stare at me. Yes, I know I’m weird. I finally managed to get him outside one day, and I have to say that I kind of miss him. :-) Spiders and weird bugs meet their demise right away with me (unless I run away), but the occasional solitary fly? I don’t know. I think they’re fun. :-P

And on that odd note, I shall end this post! Thanks for reading!