Thursday, September 08, 2005

Number Two, Sit and Stew, and a Boo Hoo Hoo

Not that number two... it’s the appearance of tooth number two.  It’s the other center bottom tooth, which is just poking its head out.  The first tooth is only a tiny bit ahead.

We have still have no AC again.  It’s been a saga.  Last Wednesday the AC went.  A big shower of condensation from the unit poured out from the ceiling.  The agency promised us that someone would be by to fix it that very day or the next.  That was when we made our big mistake.  We believed them.  By the time it was after school Friday and no one had shown up, we were upset.  Someone did show up on Saturday morning.  He discovered that we needed a part, and went to get it, but did not return.  Monday he didn’t return either.  His friend, a ceiling painter, arrived to make a huge mess under the auspices of painting our ceilings.  The friend said that the AC man was waiting for approval from the agency to buy the part and do the work.  Of course, the agency had a different story.  On Tuesday, the man did come back and after 10 hours of work, had the AC working again.  However, by the time we arrived home on Wednesday afternoon, the AC had quit again.  According to the AC man, the unit we have is beyond repair.  He has tried to make that clear to the agency, who prefer for him to try to fix it.  Today, Thursday, he and his partner spent 11 hours working on it, without success.  Tomorrow morning they said they would give it one last try.  By last night, we were angry.  We wrote a letter to the agency explaining that it was our intention to not pay our rent if full, as we had not received the service we had hired them to provide.  The school, who hold the lease on our apartment, didn’t like that idea.  Today, the agency did say that they would install a new AC.  It would take 5 days (the AC man said 7) to get here.  So, unless the guys work a little AC miracle tomorrow, we will be sweating through the weekend.  It has not helped that the last two days have been dead still, which makes our apartment a sticky sweaty and very uncomfortable place.

The boo hoo hoo came last night.  By the time we had finished discussing the possibility of repair with the repair people and arguing with the agency, it was about 8:00 pm.  Aysha went to sleep and Karla and I set to getting the work that we need to get done finished.  About 9, we heard the clunk of Aysha rolling off the bed.  It was terrible to realize what the thump was.  Since we didn’t see her fall, we didn’t know how she landed and feared the worst.  She cried for a few minutes (and didn’t have any signs of injury) and then went back to sleep.  Since neither Judy nor Brenda (Karla’s aunts who are nurses) was in, we called our Colombian host mom, who is married to a doctor.  His advice confirmed what I had found on the internet.  By this time Aysha was back asleep and we decided to wake her up to make sure she was alert.  She was slow to wake but happy to see us.  We both felt terribly guilty about her fall.  We checked on her every couple hours during the night.  She was easier to wake up (and happier to be up) than to put back to sleep.  Today she has been fine: not even any sign of bruising.

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