Waterfall in the Hallway

This is a must-record story.

Malachi had just woken up and he was ready to eat. Josiah was taking an extra- long nap. I had just received a text from a friend (she's actually our PA--someone in our company who comes to check on us once a semester. What a great company we work for!!) who offered to bring dinner over. She's great. :) I was replying when I heard a loud, strange noise that sounded like a waterfall. I opened our door to the hallway to find just that--a waterfall--coming from the ceiling about 15 feet away. It was quickly making its way to our apartment!

I shut the door and frantically started calling my PA. She speaks Chinese and could call maintenance for me. Her phone was dead. Awesome. I tried calling a few others to help. No go. Everyone else on our team was teaching. Finally, Michael answered and I told him what was happening. Our PA was actually observing his class, so he sent her to come help me.

By this time (2 minutes later), the water was seeping under our door. I started chucking all the shoes and things that would be ruined into the living room. I gathered all the towels we own and tried to stop the flow. It was coming too fast! I peeked into the hall again. Still gushing and very steamy. (We later found out it was the hot water pipe that burst...the pipe that heats this place.) I got the squegee and tried to push the water away. Still coming. Malachi, thankfully, is just hanging out on the couch even though he's hungry. I finally got enough towels down the stop the flow for the most part. It also helped that the waterfall in the hallway had started to slow down.

I looked out the window, looking for my helper to arrive. What do I see? 3 maintenance men running into our building. My friend is right behind them. Whew! Help is on the way! They make it to our floor and start jabbering, not really knowing what to do. Shut it off, maybe? No.

It finally came to just a drip and they started cleaning up. With brooms and shovels. Really?! I was cracking up. When they made it to my door, they even helped wring out my towels...until it started gushing from the ceiling again! This was the best part. They just stared at it! Astonished. They had gathered a few buckets and finally decided those would be useful. It didn't gush as long this time, and thankfully didn't make it to our door again.

My friend did an amazing job cleaning up our entry way while I fed poor Malachi. I went and woke up Josiah in the middle of all of this and he was thoroughly confused. He kept saying, "It's broken. Fix it?" I wish, buddy.

There are now about 8 tiles missing from the ceiling and 3 buckets still catching drips. Did I mention this is a brand new building? They actually just posted a note at the entry of our building, asking us to turn on the heating units (the gov't controls heat here, turning it on Nov 15th and off April 15th) for a practice run to see if any water would leak. I guess there was a little leak. :)

The great part about this is it only happened on our floor. And I was home. Had it happened on any other floor, our teammates would have had a flooded apartment because they were gone. Sadly, our neighbors weren't home, and I'm sure their place was a mess.

Just another day in China. :)