Fresh Right

So, a few nights ago my sleep was interrupted by an annoying beeping sound that came and went every minute or so. After much nudging of the dear husband to go investigate the cause of this bothersome noise.... I decided to take matters in to my own hands. It turns out our smoke detector battery was low. So, up I climbed and off it came... with no battery in the house I postponed fixing it until the next day.

Well, the next day came and went and I forgot about our little smoke detector. The next (next)morning I woke up and the A/C was not running. No biggie, I figured the in laws had turned it off in the middle of the night. I went to go unplug it and use that outlet to power my laptop (we don't have central head and air here, we use some weird A/C unit instead). When I reached the plug, it wouldn't come out. On further inspection I saw black smudges all over the outlet cover and realized the plug was melted in to the socket!!! MELTED plastic means there was a spark, one foot away from very flammable curtains in a room (um....house) with NO smoke detector! The Lord had his hand on us that night!

Well, fast forward several hours and the electricians arrive. They are young, both probably younger than me. He come armed with four things: a knife, a drill, a little cell phone sized box that they hook to the outlet to check for currency or something, and then an actual cell phone. They proceed to use the cell phone to take photographs of the outlet, then they use the knife (very safe, I know) to pry the melted plug out of the socket. Then they check/inspect the outlet. A few minutes later I try and explain to them that when the A/C blew up (for lack of a better word) another outlet in our house also went out. My explanation of that sounded something like this:

Point to A/C unit, roll hands in circle to describe that it was running (while blowing wind from my mouth), put hands together in a praying position and lean head on them and say "Sleeping" and then for emphasis i repeat it in Korea, "Chanda" (see it is one of 5 words i know and it came in handy!!!!). Then suddenly yell "BOOM" and make an explosion gesture with my hands and point to the other outlet that does not work! Yes, you have got to love the language barrier! If I had thought about it I could have typed up an explanation on google translator and given it to them that way, but this was just so much more fun!! It's like playing charades!! :)

They fix the second outlet that is not working and then head back to the A/C outlet. Then they need something. They say, "Excuse me, you have fresh right?" Um..... come again..... what in the world are they trying to say to me, fresh right? Fresh......... right? And then, I remember. Korean's can say the "l" sound, and they can also say the "r" sound, but for some reason they often use them interchangeably.... hence fresh right is really translated to be: Flash Light.

So, I find a flash light and they finish their job leaving me with instructions to call my realtor tomorrow morning and he will translate to me what the problem with the A/C is. But before they leave the point to me A/C unit and motion a large "X" with their arms and say "No!" and "DANGER!"

I think that means I shouldn't use the A/C unit.... :)