Silly and Stupid things we did in our first two months here

Sometimes being here in a whole new environment is a wonderful adventure. Sometimes is challenges us to trust God more. And sometimes it just drives us to realize how…human…we are. I wrote this list one night as I was in a good mood, laughing at the stuff we’ve done. These are mostly just things that we should have known better...but for some reason when everything around you is new and different, basic stuff can be complicated. (Names have been omitted to protect Mike's reputation).

• Told the door man “I cooked my wife”
• Told the furniture store clerk “My house is not a sofa”
• Boiled our toothbrushes until they warped and the bristles fell out
• Regularly shorted out our apts, electric and taking too long to realize that we shouldn’t be running that many things (not really that many by our standards)
• Ended up with a very high electric bill (twice what it ever was in the States, three times what we expected here) because we heated multiple rooms and left the door open (door between rooms, not door to outside
• Ordered the same wrong thing at Burger King—twice in a row
• Fried our water purifier by plugging it in to 220 outlet (in Mike’s defense, the directions said you could)
• Chewed non-chewable ibuprofen
• Ate lahmacun (a local food) with a fork and knife instead of rolling it up and eating with hands
• Washed our clothes in cold water, no spin cycle, so that after hanging out to dry forever, they were as stiff as boards (couldn’t read the washing machine labels)
• Shorted out our electricy, and then sat in the cold and dark assuming the electric in general was out (one later walked down the lit hallway, used the elevator, and made it to the street before realizing one should come back and flip the breaker)
• Failed to drain the washmachine into the bathtub, and therefore soaking the whole bathroom (we’ve done this several times)
• Left a DVD in the player we returned to the store
• Burnt tea, filled kitchen with funky smelling smoke
• Let the carrots boil over, thereby extinguishing the gas burner (catching it before the kitchen was too full of gas…)
• Poured hot grease down the sink, immediately realizing it would solidify the instant it hit the cold pipes
• Rigged a humidifier for the kids by dipping towels in almost boiling water and hanging them in front of the electric heater fan.
• Thrown away ground beef—twice—before adjusting to the reality that shelf-life here is a lot shorter

Leave a silly/stupid thing you’ve done in the comments!