So I thought I was done with electricity and water departments…

Today was week number two in going to bureaucratic offices, letting service men come in, fiddle with wires, leave, return a few hours later with more paperwork and more requests for passport photocopies, setting up meeting times that someone is late for, (Antoine was recalled numerous times while he was trying to make his way to his English class this afternoon, and they won’t tell him want they want, they always make me interpret), paying extraordinary amounts of money, being informed that they will redo the wiring again tomorrow because it’s in the landlord’s name and Antoine didn’t get to the electric office in time and they felt like doing it today, even though they have to redo it tomorrow… fixing it, coming back half an hour later to fix it since the electricity mysteriously disappeared again, going to offices where I have to explain for the thousandth time that I do not understand French and would prefer that they speak in Arabic … oh these are the fun times.