Guests and More Guests!

I've been remembering what it was like to arrive in Turkey for the first time. A new family has arrived, and we have been helping them get started. I forgot how much there is to do! We have shopped for apartments, furniture, appliances, and everything else you could possibly imagine. This family is staying with us until there is enough stuff in their apartment to make it livable. Some things aren't as important at the beginning. They had their refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, and washing machine delivered a couple of days ago. They also received a queen size mattress and 4 twin mattresses, the dryer, the kitchen table and chairs, a vacuum cleaner, and the microwave. Someone other than the delivery guys had to come and hook up all the major appliances. The warrantees on the major appliances aren't good unless they are hooked up by an expert. They also need someone to come and inspect their hot water heater. It heats water for showers as well as for the radiators in the house. Someone came to inspect it on Friday, and he said that some of the pipes were connected wrong. I think that it has been fixed, but not inspected again yet. That brought back memories of our first few days in our house! We had mattresses on the floor in the bedrooms, a kitchen table and chairs, the refrigerator, washing machine, and stove. And that was it. Our hot water heater didn't work yet since our apartment was brand new. The inspector came and told our landlord that the pipes were connected wrong. The plumber was called and he came and changed the pipes. The gas man was called to turn on the gas and the inspector was called back. The wrong pipes had been switched. The plumber was called back out, and we started over. I remember being frustrated at this point. It was March and our house was freezing! We were wearing layers of pj's and clothes to keep warm inside and out! We couldn't take hot showers. I remember thinking that it seemed crazy that it took three men to get one machine to work. It seemed like one person should be able to do all the jobs. At one point all three of the men needed to fix the problem were at our apartment, and I was ready to bar the door so that they wouldn't leave until it was fixed! It is funny now, but at the time funny was not even in my vocabulary!

There are many more things to write, but it is still so crazy around here. I originally started this blog a couple of days ago, but I never had time to finish. The family staying with us is planning on staying at their new apartment tonight. I don't know if their heat or hot water works yet. Today is a holiday so the repairmen/inspectors may not be working today. We also have some other guests in town. For the past two nights they stayed at a hotel that they have connections with, and I think we have arranged for them to stay with other friends tonight so that we can try to finish up a couple of science fair projects that are due over the next couple of days. They were hard to work on with a house full of people! I think that means it will just be our family at our house tonight, but I guess we will just see who shows up at our door looking for food and a place to sleep tonight before we know for sure!