My Apartment

Open the door, washing machine on the left, behind the washing machine is a kitchenette and a baby fridge. Walk about 5 steps forward and my twin bed is under the window and there is a TV and a vanity to the right. The bathroom is in between the kitchen and the bed. All clean, very decent, something like I would have seen in DC or New York, no big deal. I love it. Landlord said “hot water, air conditioned, internet, tv, just like America.” Cool.

This is what has happened with the apartment so far- I am not complaining, because I know more people live in far worse conditions, and some of my classmates live in huts with strangers, I’m just sharing my luck. Ps. Kolene is my neighbor, she is from St. Vincent which is also in the Caribbean so she doesn’t know any Dominicans. She has lived in the states and cooks me supper every night. I LOVE HER.

Washing machine- flooded first time I used it. I came in from my bus experience and wanted to wash my clothes so I started the load and started watching a Clint Eastwood movie and when the movie was over I set my feet down into two inches of standing water. The landlord said “You were supposed to put the drain pipe in the sink.” There was no drain pipe. Took two men three hours to fix it. There is no way that was my fault. What probably was my fault was sweeping the water out onto the deck until my basement neighbor came up yelling at me that I was flooding her house.

AC- costs a few dollars a day (you have to load on a card and enter digits into a machine) so I bought a fan. Fans are more economical, and I thought the sound would drown out the roosters crowing all day long and the voodoo man who I hear chanting in the next apartment over. Plugged it in and blew out all the electricity. I went and got Kolene and she said she couldn’t fix it, but together we walked and got Barry, the electrician from across the street. He came and took the fuse from the refrigerator to fix the fan, flipped the breakers back and said he would come the next day to fix the fridge. (He still has not been back hence I use the fridge as an ironing board.) In the Caribbean they have plugs that have three giant prongs, well the fan had two giant prongs. Wanna know what I did wrong? I didn’t put a safety pin or a key in the third prong in the outlet! Now does that sound like something we all learned on day one Never to do? Totally not my fault.

TV- the landlord turned it on for me the first time and I wasn’t really watching what she did. So after all the electricity went out and Barry fixed it all I thought I’d watch some TV but it wouldn’t turn on. I went and got Kolene. She can’t turn it on. I walk over to see Barry and he says if the TV is blown we are really in trouble because they are so hard to get and expensive here… he tells me to turn the TV on, wait a few seconds, and then start flipping channels. That works.

Hot water- back when I wasn’t running the air conditioner and didn’t have a fan it was so hot I didn’t want to take a hot shower. Now that I have a fan and am actually going into work in the mornings I would like a decently warm shower… so the first morning I asked my neighbor Kolene how to get hot water and she said, flip the switch before you get in. Monday- flipped the switch and jumped in the shower. No hot water. Tuesday, woke up, flipped the switch, brushed my teeth, turned on the TV, still no hot water. This morning I set my alarm for 5 a.m., flipped the switch, went back to sleep until 7. Got up, and got in the shower, still no hot water.

I’m gonna ask Barry to fix my refrigerator when he comes to fix the hot water heater. And I just know the internet is going next.