the water saga

We have had just about the worst luck ever with water in our apartment. It all started when we first moved in, and we always ran out of water really fast. (In Jordan, you get weekly refills of water to a tank on the top of the building. Generally every apartment has their own tank, when it runs out the haris (landlord) has to flip a switch to refill your tank from a spare tank in the basement. Usually everyone's tanks are refilled anywhere from Friday - Sunday of every week. Exciting stuff eh?)

Anyway, we would start running out of water on Tuesdays and had no idea why. None of us were taking extremely long showers four times a day and we never had enough water to do laundry. However there was always an excessive amount of water on the kitchen floor and in S and C's bathroom. Once we mentioned this to our haris, he came over to look at the situation. Ah yes, he said as if the problem was blatant. The washing machine (in the kitchen) and the toilet were both leaking and needed to have pipes fixed. Since everything operates of Jordanian time (read: slow), it took about a week to get both of these issues fixed. Not to mention, that in the process of "fixing" the toilet the haris just left a hose unplugged so that toilet was broken for a week. But at least our water issues were resolved, or so we thought...

Then our electricity kept shorting and we had to flip the switch basically all the time. There were a few days when we were flipping it at least 10 times a day, not safe. Finally the haris and a person from our school came to have a look. Come to find out, there was water inside of the water heater and it was making the electricity spark. They 'fixed' it, but alas another week later there were more problems. Eventually we needed to get a new water heater, which meant that while they were replacing the old one we didn't have hot water for a few days.

However, our new water heater doesn't really heat the water. Our brand new water heater keeps water steaming hot to the point where it is burning your skin for a full 12 minutes, and after these 12 minutes the water is freezing again.

A few days ago, our water pressure completely dropped where only small dribbles would come out of the sink at any given time. We though we had just run out of water so we called our haris to refill it. He said he did, but the water pressure was still really bad. So he gave our pipes a look and our water pump had a burst pipe. So they turned off our water in order to fix the problem which left us without water for about two days at this point. Eventually the plumber came, but the day he came he realized he couldn't fix it without some parts and would hopefully be back the next day. Not the best phrasing when you've been without water for 3 days already. So the water finally got fixed today, just a mere two hours ago. So our 3-month bad water saga is over, at least for now...