european electricity

before we came to germany we KNEW that we needed to get an adaptor/converter/all of the above. we really tried to do our homework on this. even when we got here we asked the other people in our group so we really thought we had it down.

well, this week, our host family is out of town this week vising the LDS temple in germany. so...we're on our own. we hadn't used our adaptor/converters yet because, like i said, we were checking with others to make sure we were doing it correctly.

last night joslin was on her computer talking to our family via gmail video chat and i was in the shower. her computer was plugged in, to an adaptor and then a converter. you can probably see where this is going. i had just barely turned off the water when suddenly the power shuts off. pitch black. oh yeah, i forgot to mention that it's 11:30 here. so...dark.

i'm in the shower not exactly dressed yet and freaking out and joslin and i start shouting to each other, i am PANICKING. we had already discussed with each other sooo many times how we were nervous about the whole converter situation. you know in the movies where there is a dumb blonde who tries to jam an american plug in into a european socket and takes down the power in the whole city? happens in "when in rome," and i think..."just married?" that's exactly what we were concerned about. so naturally when the power goes out that is what i am imagining.

well i calm down enough to get dressed so we can go asess the situation. joslins plug in/the adaptor was smoking and smelled baddd which clearly was the issue. THANKFULLY joslins computer still had a few minutes of power and my dad was still on the video chat so we discussed our options. the son of our host family lives next door to us and we were supposed to ask him if we had any questions/problems. the main issue with that is that he speaks hardly any english so...i wasn't too keen on that idea. and it was 11:30 at night. and we barely know him. ahh.

so we go around the house and there are only 3 lights that work in the house, all of the others don't work. luckily we had a small flashlight from my sister claire (thanks girly!) that we used to navigate around the house or else that would have been 10x creepier. we said like 4987 prayers. cried a little. and then ultimately decided that we should go over and knock on the sons door. (we had seen that a light was on, it looked like a TV, so that seemed safe enough). we were going to use the front door ("you know you could use the front door" sorry had to throw in that movie quote for all of you who know she's the man...) but couldn't find it. trust me it was hidden. so their backyards are connected so we started going around!

anywaysss we knocked on the door, i was soo nervous he would be mad or not understand us, but he was SO nice. and actually speaks decent enlish. good job robert. man seriously. so nice. he came over and just basically flipped a few switches because some curcuits had blown (except in germany it's not that simple as flipping switches, you have to turn some knobs or something) so it wasn't bad at alll. he was soo nice and didn't make us feel dumb at all!

he even came over today when we were home to see if everything was working and help us figure out the computer sitution, i'm using it now so we figured it out :). sure do like those nice people!

so i mean. good thing that we have a hilarious story now. because at the time that was sooo not funny. i was planning on going to bed early, doing like 5 blog posts, but instead we practically blew up the house. okay not really but that is SO what it felt like. i mean we thought we had ruined something you know?! turns out that nope, not that big of a deal. we decided one of the top 5 worst feelings in our lives. IN OUR LIVES.

but i sure do like prayers. they work.