temperamental china

so the apartment that i have been living in for the past year is slowly falling apart. the ceiling is falling down, the windows do not keep the sand out from the frequent sand storms, the water occasionally turns brown, two of the three sinks have leaks, my DVD player is broken, and my kitchen table is about to plummet to the floor, only being held up by one or two rusty nails. these slight inconveniences are easy to live with. it was the most recent event, however, that made for an adventure just in my own apartment.

being on the first floor, both of my bathrooms are only inches above the river of sewage flowing right under my apartment. the odor gives this fact away. well, when mike and i returned from our 6 week foray into the life of southeast asianers, our pipes were frozen after not being used for a while. a few successive flushings and sink usages resulted in a flood of seemingly clean water at first. our entire apartment was covered in 1/2 inch deep water. a little chafed, we dried it up and called maintenance. being told that it was fixed, we continued about our lives like normal. well, it turned out that the problem was worse than anybody thought. after 3 or more floods which eventually ended with raw sewage flowing into our apartment a couple of times, it was time that something was done. 2 days of maintenance crews working finally resulted in the fixing of the drains. what was left for us to clean up follows in these pictures. yes, those are solid pieces of raw sewage.