Miah writes!

So I guess it is my turn to actually write something on this blog so that it really is dwain and Miah's... So anyway, today was our first official work day at school, and we find out that the librarian, who is also a new hire and just arrived in a Greece a week ago, has been admitted to the hospital for a week because of blood clots in her leg. Therefore, as soon as my afternoon meeting was done, I went over the Saint Nikki's (that is our new name for her becuase she has done everything for us since we arrived-oh and remember to ask dwain to blog about the phone call from Nikki on the delivery man's personal cellphone) to find out how she was and if we could do anything etc. During that conversation, Nikki asked how things were going for us, and I said everything had been delivered, we just needed to have the stove set up. Nikki stepped out of the room and in two minutes came back in and told me to be at the front gate in 5 minutes and that an electrician would be meeting me there to come hook our stove. I frantically went looking for dwain who was in a meeting somewhere and had the only set of house keys, and amazingly I found him, got my purse from my room and was at the gate in 5 minutes. The electrician was waiting there with the security guard and they were talking, so when I got there I told them the names of the streets by our house and we hopped in his car. We got to the end of the block with him talking and me just nodding when we realized that he didn't speak any English and I don't speak any Greek. He backed up three blocks (which is what drivers do here when they are on one-way streets) and asked the security to tell him where our aparment was. The security guard told me that he didn't know the street names I had given him so that I was going to have to direct him. I can get from school to the apartment on foot but have no idea how to drive there on one-way streets, but somehow he found one of the streets I recognized and I was able to point to our house and say "ne, ne, yes, yes."

We got in our place and he looked at the stove and said something to me and left. I assumed he was coming back so I took a chair out on the balcony (to wait to be able to open the gate for him if he came back). I also took the computer becuase I thought I might actually blog while I was waiting. Well when I tried to open up the blogging page everything was in Greek. Then when I went to our blog, it was also all in Greek and I had no idea why (unless dwain was lying to me about not being able to speak and write Greek and was secretly writing blogs in Greek) or how to fix it so I gave up.

About 45 minutes later the electrician showed up with a cord that he must have had to go buy, and he spent the next 20 minutes working in the kitchen. Instead of trying to ask me where the fuse box was, he just went looking and found it at the end of the hall and turned on the kitchen. Then he showed me that each of the burners worked by placing his hand on them until they got hot and then having me touch. Then he said a bunch of something, and I thought I understood "school" so I said "ne, ne, yes, yes" and went back out to the car with him.

He dropped me off at the security gate and the guard asked me how it went and I said "Great!" and then I asked him to ask the electrician how much I owed him for driving me to and from, for the cord, and for the labor and after the security gaurd and electrician talked and laughed for a while. He told me it was on the house and was a gift. I must have been extremely pathetic but am grateful to have a working stove and to be living in a country of friendly people even if I can't understand a word they say.