Pregnant Woman Who Hasn’t Had A Hot Shower In Her Own Home Since Mid October VS. innocent Repair Men Who Have No Idea What She is Saying And Her Poor Husband Who Has To Be The Punching Bag Because He Understands English

In case you didn’t know we have had water issues since the day we moved in…we had repair men come off and on during the first couple months.  Adam works all day so this is more of a Lindsay issue.  As annoying as it is to be stuck in a house waiting for repair men, imagine having them not understand you and if they do not believing you.  I may not know anything about plumbing but I do know that most plumbers carry tools (not in China…and the one that did bring tools brought a hammer…not a typical plumber tool if you ask me).  I am sure most of our issue is communication, but that isn’t the whole problem. 

We have had a couple of days of warm water after the Cree engineers came.  After that didn’t work we demanded a new hot water heater.  This was a couple weeks ago, the landlord was great about replacing it quickly.  Unfortunately it only fixed the kitchen hot water.  Adam decided to take a look at it himself and he discovered that the heater wouldn’t turn on when we turned on the shower.  We had a maintenance worker come and confirm that that could be the issue.  He told us the temporary fix was to turn on the hot water in the kitchen just enough to switch the heater on then take a shower…it was better than nothing but it wasn’t much fun running back and forth from the kitchen to the bathroom so as not to over work the heater.  The long term fix is to tear up all of the tile in the bathroom (floor to ceiling) and fix the pipe, or buy a separate heater for the shower. 

Our landlord refused to do either and instead sent his “expert” to fix the problem.  Which brings us to today…2 days before I have 40+ people coming for a Christmas party and 2 months since I have had a hot shower in my own home.  The guy came with only a hammer (again correct me if I am wrong but don’t you need a wrench to fix a pipe and wouldn’t the hammer be totally useless).  After he turned off the water in the middle of me doing laundry and baking, and flooded under our bathroom sink I was finished.  I tried yelling at him, and I think he was a little scared of me (possibly because I was 3 inches taller than him and yelling at him in a language he couldn’t understand…he did understand my face and the miming).  After 3 hours of turning the water on and off, finding a wrench and taking everything apart he decided that there was a problem. 

Poor Adam had to listen to me yell over the phone, it’s not satisfying yelling at someone who doesn’t understand.  I decided that our Landlord had until the end of the day today to decide if he was going to buy us a heater and when to have it installed…if I don’t like his answer I will be moving.  I have actually already received apartment information from a friend who is leaving in the beginning of January.  All we have to do is make a phone call and we will be out of here in the middle of January. 

I just figured that if he is going to be difficult and if it takes people coming to my apartment 3 times for him to do something I don’t want to deal with him.  I especially don’t want to worry about something going wrong and having people in and out of our apartment when we have an infant.  I have been nice up until now because I know Chinese standards are different then American standards; however none of my international friends here have issues with their landlord.  They have problems fixed the day they discover them or a couple days later if it requires lots of work.  In fact landlords here LOVE having foreigners live in their apartments because they say Chinese people don’t take care of their things.  Tomorrow I will update you on our decision.