New houses (especially ones in countries other than your own), require an adjustment period whereby one must acclimate to the nuances of that specific house. Much like a teenager goes through growing pains, we always go through a period I like to call “moving pains”.
Common occurrences in the “moving pains” period include:
- cursing under one’s breath as you try the umpteenth light switch in a room, only to realize that the switch you want is in an adjacent room (and that some switches do absolutely NOTHING)
- smashing your forehead into the bathroom door at 2 A.M. because you misremembered where the bathroom entrance was and didn’t want to turn on a light and wake your sleep-deprived spouse
- taking cold showers because you can’t figure out how to get hot water to come out of the tap. In Mumbai, we had a specific light switch on that activated the water heater (and required a 10 minute warm-up period). Here, we learned the hard way that when on “city water”, the hot water often runs out at key times of day. Veterans know that on those days you simply need to head on down to the basement and switch over your water tank to the in-house water heater and allow 30 minutes for it to warm up. Now we know and will build in an hour for showering! :)
- everyone crowded in one room on computers because we haven’t figured out how to extend the wifi signal beyond the room the router is in thanks to the solid concrete walls.
- overall key confusion. For some reason we have two solid wood front doors, one right in front of the other. Unfortunately, on Nick’s first full day of work, he took the keys to the outer door and when I locked the house to go visit the neighbor, I locked the inner door. This should have been no big deal because I was right next door and Nia was up in her bedroom on the third floor but she didn’t hear the doorbell that far up and I had forgotten the phone that he was trying to message me on. When I wrapped up my tea date, I came home to a very frustrated husband who’d been sitting outside for 30 minutes. Oops! The good thing to come out of that was our newly formed key plan–I’m happy to say that everyone is on the same page now with the front door.
Those are just a few of the frustrating and funny things we’ve been through these first few days. Thought you might find them amusing. It hasn’t been all frustration though. Today’s wins include me getting a local cell phone number, Nia attending her new school orientation, and Nick successfully withdrawing local currency for us. Here’s what our new money looks like. It’s called the Kazakhstan tenge (KZT). Isn’t it pretty?
