La Vie en Rose

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - La Vie en Rose

For those of you who have been asking for an update, brace yourselves. The following isn’t exactly as pleasantly entertaining or lighthearted as usual.

As all of you know, Rema and I found a delightful apartment in the quiet chic 7th arrondissement. We were so excited to move in! It is a lot bigger than many of the other student-budget apartments available, so we have felt quite lucky thus far. Well, to start, we realized that the washing machine handle was broken rendering it unusable almost immediately after unpacking our bags. Then to our surprise, we discovered that there are exactly 4 electrical outlets in the entire apartment; one in the kitchen for the coffeemaker, one in the bathroom for the hairdryer, one for the internet box, and one in an awkward corner of the bedroom that was broken. Where do we plug in our various laptops, cell phone chargers, camera chargers, TV (more on that later), and microwave? I mean those are only slightly necessary, right? So…”Oh, Madame…” our landlord we call to ask about the washing machine and the electrical outlets. Okay, no problem! She will have 2 new outlets installed immediately and the washing machine next week. That was easy. Then we think, wait we are paying for cable right? Right. Um, we don’t even have a TV in here. “Oh, Madame…” We pick up the new TV a couple days later. Wait. Now that we have the TV we realize that we only have an internet box not even a cable box at all. “Oh, Madame…”

Finally, the new washing machine comes via our repairman, Georges. Yikes, our kitchen counter is too low, the machine doesn’t fit. “Oh, Madame…” We apparently must now have a new kitchen installed. One new countertop, one new sink, and some new cupboards later, the kitchen is complete! “Oh, Madame…” We don’t have any hot water. The hot water heater is thus replaced by my handyman Georges; we are becoming quite good friends by now.

Then, the new cable and internet boxes are delivered! Yay, we actually get to watch our French TV after having it staring blank in our faces for 3 weeks! “Oh, Madame…” All the instructions are in French… Okay, Madame’s son comes and installs everything; it is all set up but now for whatever reason the landline telephone won’t work…I’m a little too afraid to “Oh, Madame…” as of yet, maybe later. Madame is so far the biggest consumer of my calling card minutes. That is just depressing.

Well, the bathroom vanity was another problem. When we moved in we knew it wasn’t exactly esthetically pleasing but we can handle that right? Wrong, the light doesn’t function properly and apparently it is breaking some health or safety code or something. Away it goes, and here comes Georges to replace it with a very nicely lit and classy one! (Hey that was too easy, I’m a little nervous about it still.)

Oh and I almost forgot about the sofa bed! Remember how excited we were to have a sofa bed in the living room for guests! How convenient that would be! Oops, it’s totally broken, “Oh, Madame…” Georges came and replaced the frame and we have received stern instructions to not jump on it. So please, if any of you are planning on visiting, I only ask that you restrain yourselves from taking your excitement out on our brand spanking new sofa bed.

Okay, now I am a fairly reasonable, even-tempered, go-with-the-flow type of girl up until this point. However, when I wake up in the morning to find myself covered in bug bites, that is where I tend to, um let’s just say, draw the line. Bed Bugs. What. The. Heck. (Insert other colorful expressions here) Questions race through my mind: “Is this really happening?” “Only in third world countries, right?” I mean you’ve got to be kidding me.

Unfortunately not. 30 bites and 30 dollars spent on bug spray that apparently won’t help and anti-histamine cream later. I sit on my new sofa bed, scratching my neck, arms, stomach, back, and chin thinking, “Who wouldn’t want to live in Paris?”

To be continued…If I wake up tomorrow that is.