125.000 Western Lowland Gorillas found in Congo !!! Amaaaazing :D

Nightmare on St. Marys Road

Wow lots of stuff has happened since my last blog. After 2 1/2 amazing weeks in Iceland (with my family and friends and a special appearance of my 9 month old amazing and beautiful niece Agnes that fought for her life when she was only a day old) I came back to Oxford and moved into a new house. What a nightmare it has been!!!
After scrubbing our old house in Percy Street and leaving it completely spotless we moved into a PIGSTY !!! The landlord and the letting agency had promised us a fixed and clean house and then nothing had been done. We had to start by scrubbing the mold off the bathroom walls and clean the moldy fridge and throw away old food from previous tenants. Naharas bed was moldy in the cellar so she had to sleep on the floor for the first 5 nights. We have now lived here for 2 weeks and things are not all fine yet. But they have finally put a new floor on the kitchen and bathroom, thrown away the garbage that had piled up in front of the house (and moldy bed and other moldy stuff from the cellar). On top of everything the boiler broke so we had no hot water for 3 days and we discovered a leak in the cellar that was causing all the mold to grow. We spent all yesterday cleaning the cellar and trying to dry it, hopefully it will be fixed on Tuesday. But we have had 2000 false promises already so we dont trust anyone anymore.

We have been quite depressed about the whole thing but at least we had a nice living room (when it was not full of kitchen stuff) and we have lovely housemates, so its now me, Nahara, Joanna and Robert living together.

If you are living in Oxford and want to rent, I do NOT recommend City Properties !!!! Beware they are not professionals and they do not respect you. If you come and complain they make you feel like you are a naughty little child. We had to push push AND PUSH to get things done, things that had been promised to us when we signed the lease. Sadly I have been told that many landlords and letting agencies in Oxford (and the UK) will treat you like shit and make false promises.

Well this will be the last moaning about my house :) Its starting to look and feel lovely and I am sure we will be very happy here :) A trip to IKEA last weekend (thank you Kate lifesaver) made everything better, I bought some nice stuff for my room and now it feels quite cosy. I also cannot wait for my sister Helga to come visit me tomorrow :)