Oh the mopping!

Well, we spent our first night at our apartment on Tuesday night.

Really not much in the apartment except the bed and a table we brought with us.

We kept the a/c going in the bedroom all night, set at 25 celcius (which is about 77 degrees) and it cycled off and on about every 5 minutes once it got up to temp. The noise doesn't seem to bother me which is a good thing. Not exactly white noise but not bad.

We actually got to sleep pretty late, after staying up to watch the movie African Queen. And we didn't even finish it at that. By 4:15 a.m., hubby was ready to call it quits for the night, so we turned things off and got to bed.

Only I knew that the morning call to prayer would be coming fairly soon, so I didn't want to fall asleep only to be awoken 10 or 20 minutes later by a blaring loudspeaker from across the street.

So, I played a handheld game and waited for the call to prayer.

When I heard it sound, I thought to myself, "wow, that's not so bad, not half as loud as I thought it would be. This will be no problem at all."

Of course... the call to prayer I heard was not the one that's across the street, it was at another mosque further away. lol

I realized that after the call started up across the street, as blaringly loud as I had suspected it would be at 4:35 a.m. with no daytime noise to mask the sound at all.

The thing is, the mosque is just one door down, across the street, and the loudspeaker is on the top of the building, which is a couple stories, and we're on the fourth floor, and our bedroom is on the same street that the mosque is on.

So... loud. For sure! lol

However, hubby managed to sleep right through it, and I imagine that if I'm sleeping it won't be a problem. I'm not positive but we'll see.

Not that we should be sleeping through it anyways.



So, next morning, after a seemingly restful sleep, hubby got up and went off to work, and wanted to have me mop the floors because the dust builds up amazingly fast in this place, worse than at my in-laws, which is saying something.

Hubby thinks the dust build up is from the roof across the street, which is right at the level of our apartment, and which is covered with large piles of loose stone and dirt type of stuff. So the wind just blows it all right into our place.

Of course, if we had regular sliding windows instead of shutters, this might not be an issue.

Anyways, the mop that we have at the apartment is a rag mop, and I do NOT like rag mops. They're impossible to keep clean and I just don't like the way they work at all. I'd much rather have a sponge mop.

But, I could only work with what I had, so I went to it.

Two complete moppings of the apartment later, and you could still see a layer of dust on the floor. I had to change the water a lot while mopping, which, yes, is a pain in the butt.

It might have helped if I could have swept first, but the two handheld brooms that were there weren't doing anything towards getting the dust up.

I'm hoping that a vacuum will help, in which case I can vacuum a couple times a week and only mop maybe once a week.

So, a lot of mopping going on. And sore arms this morning. lol


Also tried to run a couple of towels in the washing machine. I thought I had all the knobs figured out right, so I turned it on and it made an appropriate humming/on noise, which I thought meant that the heater was warming up to get the water hot.

I let it go while I started mopping, but kept noticing it as I changed the mop water, and grew increasingly suspicious that something wasn't right when it didn't get past making that humming noise.

I actually started to worry, and after about an hour I called hubby who said to just turn it off and we would work on it later.

Turns out, at least I think anyways, that I just needed to turn the water on from the wall so that it could get into the machine.

Well... honestly, that stuff is just on in the States as far as I know. You don't turn the water hose off, because.... well... why? lol

So, when we go back I will see if that was it.


The cupboard for the sink didn't turn out the way hubby wanted and so he's going to get one a little bigger and with a bigger stainless steel sink and marble top. Insha'Allah. Not sure when it will be done. Hubby is going to pick out the sink on Saturday, which to me means that the whole thing won't be done til maybe... Tuesday or Wednesday.


Not sure when we'll be spending the night there again. I thought it was supposed to be tonight but that's not happening. Not sure about tomorrow night. Perhaps.


I know I have a LOT more work to do there in terms of cleaning, and I'm eager for the challenge and the chance to be occupied and feeling useful.


All in all, steps in the right direction.


Also, after a few days of 100 degree weather, today was only about 82. Wow, what a nice change. Supposed to be the same tomorrow I think before getting a bit hot again. We'll get to Autumn eventually.