Episode 25: Apartment Living

Today, Donielle and Khrystyna are discussing  experiences renting and living in apartments. We also discuss an interesting  court case, sparking conversations about the diverse cultural influences shaping perspectives on adult children continuing to reside in their parents' home.

Download the show notes for this episode for lots more helpful language info!

Transcript

D           Welcome to Coffee and Conversation for ESL Listening. I'm Danielle.

 K            And I'm Khrystyna, so grab a cup and join the conversation.

 D           Hey Khrystyna, how are you?

 K            I'm doing well. How are you? How have you been?

 D           Good, good, good. I know you've been busy, super busy. When I talk to you, you are kind of running around crazy and we had to kind of squeeze this podcast recording in. So stay awake for us. Okay?

 K            Yes, I'll stay awake. Yeah, it's been pretty busy here with work and everything, but that's okay. I know quiet times are coming. At least that's what I keep telling myself. But what's going on with you? What's new? I haven't talked to you in a while.

 D           Yeah, it's been a couple weeks. Yeah, not really a whole lot except I don't know, you probably are aware that it's Mardi Gras time. 

 K            Oh yeah.

 D           Yeah, I know that isn't something they really, you know, think about or celebrate over there. But down here, it's a huge thing. And on Sunday, I went to a parade and I went to my very first Mardi Gras ball.

 K            Oh my gosh!

 D           Yes, it's kind of a big deal because you have to be invited by someone who is in the parade. And so I have a French student and her friend was kind enough to invite us to the ball and we had a ball.

 K            You had a ball at the ball. Oh my gosh. Okay. So, so tell me more about it. Um, and he was in Alabama, right in your town or was it,

 D           In Mobile, yeah.

  K           Okay. So what, what kind of ball is it? Is it like a formal thing where you had to dress up and there's all sorts of dancing and fancy food, or is it like more of a casual thing?

 D           Well, the dressing up is very fancy. I don't know if you can see, but I got my nails done. They're all sparkly and...

 K            I noticed that I was like, Oh, I rarely see you get your nails done. But I was like, there has to be some reason for it. But you know, Valentine's Day is coming up. So I thought maybe you're preparing for that too.

 D           Oh yeah, oh yeah. Well, you remember last year I went to a quinceanera and I bought a fancy dress for that. 

 K            Oh yeah.

 D           And I said, man, I better find some other occasion to wear this thing, you know? And I sure did. So I wore the same dress. Yay. 

 K            Very nice. Did your husband go with you too? 

 D           No, it was… you know, he's not really into that kind of thing. But you know, there’s a friend of mine who also knows my student and kind of a small network over here. But yeah, so we went and it is fancy. You have to dress up. They have dancing food, you know, drinks, that kind of thing. And a very, I don't even know how to describe it, but it's kind of a strange ceremony. Yeah, that they do, they've got a king and a queen and then they bring out all of the people from the floats. They're called Krewes. And it's just this big extravagant thing. So it was pretty cool and something new.

 K            That's interesting, I've never heard of this before. 

 D           No? Yeah.

 K            I've never heard of Mardi Gras ball. Like, yeah, I know that there's parades and all that. You know, and the funny thing is, knowing you, as soon as you said Mardi Gras, my first thought was like, no way, she just went to New Orleans.

 D           No. I know. Well, you know, a little bit of history here. Mardi Gras is famous in New Orleans for sure. I mean, if you think of Mardi Gras, you think of New Orleans, but Mobile is actually the birthplace of Mardi Gras. A lot of people don't know that. 

 K            Really?

 D           And they're very proud of that here, you know, that this is the original Mardi Gras place. 

 K            Interesting, very interesting. All right, hey.

 D           So yeah, that was my weekend. And so now we have a topic today. It's a little bit different. We are going to talk sort of about housing, about apartments, about rentals. And we'll talk a little bit about in the United States, maybe versus other places. It could be a really huge topic. So we're going to kind of narrow this down based on a news article that I read and we'll talk about that a little bit more. But to begin, let's just talk a little bit about renting apartments. In the United States, have you rented an apartment?

 K            I have, I actually, the very first place I lived at when I moved here, when I got married was a, an apartment in a small town, like not far from here. That's where my husband got his first job after graduating from law school. So when we moved… the funny story is because he was in Ukraine, we were getting married and all that stuff. His mom actually went to that small town to find an apartment for us. So when we came, we had a place to stay. 

 D           Oh, that’s good.

 K            Well, it was good and it was a nice apartment. However, sad story. So we moved into that apartment. We still… we only had a couple of our suitcases and all that. We didn't have the furniture, but of course, you know, we moved in there. We arrived on Sunday and then my husband started his job on Monday. So I was there by myself and I started cleaning and washing everything. You know, I kind of wanted to make sure everything is to my standard. 

 D           I can see this.

 K            And guess what? After I got all of that stuff cleaning and all that stuff, and we kind of, you know, we had a mattress, we slept for the few nights before the furniture arrived. We wake up in the morning and we notice roaches.

 D           Oh no! No, no, no.

 K            And I was like, Oh no, we can't live here. And the first I was like, okay, maybe we can do something to get rid of them because I lived in a dorm before, you know, so that wasn't something, you know, it happened before. So I wasn't too surprised or freaked out by it. My husband absolutely lost his mind. Well, I mean, figuratively, but he just like, we cannot stay here another day. This … we're not staying and all that stuff. Right. So we call the landlord right away. A landlord is a person who owns apartments, right? And then rents out to other people. 

 D           And you would be the tenant. Yes.

 K            And we were, yes, we were the tenants. Um, so we called him right away and told him what was going on and all that. And he moved us to a different apartment in a different building, different part of town. So he owned several apartment buildings throughout town. Um, so he moved us to a different place and it ended up being better for us because that place had a garage. The first place it was just the outside parking, but that place actually had a garage with the apartment. So, and that's where we stayed for a couple of years. Yeah. Until we moved where we live now and we rented apartment here too for a couple of years before we bought our first house. So yeah, I've been in several apartments. What about you?

 D           I've been in more apartments than you could, that I could count. I have many, many, many apartments. Yeah. And it's interesting because you…There's kind of a reputation when you rent that the landlords are really hard to deal with and you get a bad situation. And sometimes it does happen, but the reality is the law is pretty much on the tenant’s side for the most part. So like when you were saying that the landlord moved you to a better place, I'm not really surprised because you have certain expectations when you rent an apartment that you should be roach free for sure.

 K            And it's, you know, for landlords, this is a way of, I mean, this is business for them, right? So this is a way of making a living, making money and all that. And if you have unhappy tenants, they will go and find a different landlord if, you know, if there is a possibility. So, but…okay. So I have another funny story. Our landlord in that apartment, he was kind of a strange guy. Like he was a little older and all that. So one day, it was in the middle of the day on Sunday, like three o 'clock in the afternoon, he knocks on our door. My husband opens the door and he's standing there with a plunger and he goes, oh, you guys called and you needed to plunge the toilet. And my husband's like, well, no, we didn't call you. He's like, no, no, you called. I'm going to go plunge your toilet. He just walks into our apartment and goes and starts plunging our toilet. My husband looked at each other like, is anything wrong with the toilet? He's like, no. And then he leaves. He just plunges the toilet, flushes a couple of times, and then he walks out. It was the strangest thing I've ever experienced. We both said, my husband and I both said for like a few minutes after that, just trying to process what just happened. 

 D           That was weird. Somebody else must have called and he got confused who it was or something. Yeah.

 K            I know. But he wasn't going to take no for an answer. He was determined to plunge that toilet.

 D           You're like, have at it. You know, you say that this has nothing to do with that at all, but I just remembered when you talk about having a funny story - I have a really funny story about renting and - this is not good. It's funny in retrospect, but it's not good. So when I was living in Chicago, I was in this apartment building - I don't know if I ever told you this - it was an old hotel, I believe, that they converted into an apartment [building]. So, you know like when you go to you know, the main floor or something, and it would be this long hallway because there's, you know, apartment, apartment, apartment. It was like that. Right. So I think it was four or five floors. I don't remember which one. And I lived on the third floor and I had gone out that evening with a friend of mine. We'd gone dancing. We used to go dancing all the time and it was super late. It was probably like one o'clock in the morning when she came back with me. She was going to stay at my house. So we got back and we were really tired. And I go to put my key in the door and it opens. I open up “my door” and I see someone else's apartment.

 K            Oh my gosh.

 D           I nearly died. I was like, what? Well, what had happened was because all these floors look exactly the same. I went to the wrong floor. Yeah. But why did the key work? Why?

 K            Exactly! That is scary because that person could just walk into your apartment and... 

 D           Exactly. I mean, I was horrified.

 K            So what did you do?

 D           Well, I quickly shut the door, locked it, and ran away because I thought, you know, the person who lives in here, it's one o 'clock in the morning. They're going to jump out, probably with a baseball bat, something, you know? Yeah, that was crazy.

 K            Oh my gosh. Did you ever say anything to the landlord that, that you know, the keys are the same?

 D           You know, I don't know why I didn't. I think because I was like in my early 20s and I thought…I think I was embarrassed and I thought, oh, what a dumb thing. And how am I going to admit that I opened someone else's door? But I mean, I really should have because that is not good.

 K            So something similar, but I was on the receiving end of it. Like somebody happened to me in our apartment. We stayed here in town and we had a very nice apartment here that we really liked. Um, you know how sometimes maintenance people would come into, go into apartments and like check on things or, you know, like just do maintenance. Sometimes they check on heating or air conditioning or some sort of a water work. 

 D           Right.

 K            Well, um, apparently there was some sort of a maintenance scheduled, but somehow we never got a notice for that. But … most of the time, the practice is that they will either contact you or leave some sort of a notice on your door that at this time maintenance will be coming and check on the thing.

 D           Right.

 K            Well, we never got that notice. So one morning I was, I was at home, my husband was at work. And I was in the shower…

 D           Oh no.

 K            getting ready for something. So I get out of the shower and I hear somebody walking up the stairs into [the] apartment. Cause we lived on the second floor, but the door was down, like down the stairs. 

 D           Okay, I know you mean, yeah.

 K            Right. So here's somebody is walking up the stairs and. And I, I mean, I got scared to no end because somebody broke into [my] apartment. What do I do? You know, so I quickly get dressed. And for some reason we always had a baseball bat by our bed. Just in case, you never know, right?

 D           You really did have a baseball bat. 

 K            Just in case; you never know.

 D           That's sort of the, you know, stereotype like you see in movies and stuff. Someone has a baseball bat, but you really did.

 K            Yeah, we did. We lived that stereotype. So I grabbed this baseball bat and I slowly kind of creep around the corner from my room holding the baseball bat, like any minute ready to strike. And I jump out and there's a man in my living room in the kitchen and he jumps back and I was like, what are you doing here? And he goes, “I'm maintenance, I'm checking on this and this. There was a notice that went out to everybody that I was going to check apartments.” I was like, I didn't get any notice. And he's like, I am so sorry. So he gives me like the paperwork and all this stuff showing. And I was like, you can't do this. Like I was ready to whack you with this baseball bat.

 D           Yeah. Well, you know, even if they have given notice, they always knock on the door before they enter because you can really get into a lot of trouble. 

 K            Which they could have. Right, they probably did, but I was in the shower so I didn't hear them.

 D           Oh wow. 

 K            But you would think if you walked into somebody's place and you hear them in the shower, you probably would either walk out or something, you know, wouldn't... I was like, Oh my.

 D           You do like I did, quietly close the door back up and go out.

 K            So, you know, something when we're talking about apartment living too, depends on where you live, like depends on the city or town you live. Sometimes they say, you know, that their apartments are not always in a good area, like good neighborhood. So it's it's almost like this kind of stigma that, you sometimes if you're an apartment, while you never know if you're in a good neighborhood or not. And I think when you moved here, you stayed in an apartment that was a little sketchy neighborhood.

 D           I sure did. But you know, I didn't even know. And one thing they do say, if you're looking for an apartment somewhere, you should always… any place you're considering renting, you should always drive around at night

 K            Yes.

 D           because it could look fantastic during the day. But then the weird sketchy stuff happens at night. And we did not.

 K            At night, right. And usually they say that the price, you want to look at the rental price. If it's inexpensive or seems too good to be true, then usually it's probably not a very good neighborhood. So yeah.

 D           It probably is. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, we didn't stay there very long because that was, yeah, I mean, it wasn't horrible, but it was just like, not not really the best. 

 K            No, it's actually, it's horrible.

 D           Oh, it is? OK. I think I've lived in worse in Chicago, that's why.

 K            I still read stories about things that happen in that neighborhood. 

 D           Oh my gosh, I'm glad I didn't know.

 K            Yeah, sometimes it's good not to know.

 D           Yes, ignorance is bliss as they say. Well, at this rate, we're never going to get to our story, but I think it was interesting. So what we're going to talk about a little bit is a funny story that I read. And I know you've also read it too. And when I saw this story, I thought to myself, this just had to be the United States. I mean, this couldn't have happened anywhere else. I mean, maybe not literally, but it really screamed to me – oh, United States situation. And it has to do with renting. Now, one thing that we'll say is like when you are living someplace that's not your own, you're either staying with someone as a, you know, a friend or you're renting, whatever it is, the law is kind of on your side, like I said earlier. And if someone invites you to stay in their home, it's not so easy to make them go away. Yeah. You have to give what they call notice and you have to give them time to go find another place to live. And then after you've given them notice and they still haven't left, then you can move to evict them. And that means force them out through the courts. But imagine if you're doing this, if it's your own child that's living in your house.

 K            That's, you know, like that calls for all sorts of problems.

 D           Yes. So, yeah, so this was a story that I saw about someone I forgot to notice how old he was. I think he was…

 K            I think he was 30. Yeah.

D          30. Yes, he sure was. He was 30 years old and I think for like eight years, his parents were trying to get him out of the house to no avail. Yes. There's an expression, I don't know if you've heard of this, and there was a movie called this, Failure to Launch. 

 K            Oh yes, yeah, I watched it.

 D           Yeah. Oh, did you see it? I didn't see the movie, but I assume it's the similar topic that it's like you're a child, a grown child, who's having difficulty adjusting to adulthood. You know, I can get that adulting is hard.

 K            Yeah, but they don't want to leave the nest.

 D           Don't want to leave the nest. Exactly. For sure. 

 K            Bird doesn’t want to fly!

 D           And you try to push that little birdie out, but birdie is like, nope, holding on with the claws. Nope. Yeah. So in this story, these parents, they sued, that means they filed a lawsuit or they took their son to court. All of these things you can say. To get the judge to order - get my kid out of my house. And eventually, because it had taken five months and the parents were just sick of it. Five months they'd been giving notice multiple times and they offered to help him with money to get organized. They gave him advice for how to get a job and get going. He just would not do anything. So this was kind of a last resort for them.

 And ultimately the judge ruled in the parent's favor and said he had to get out. But of course, they did give him a little bit of notice and maybe gave him a month or something like that. So yeah, I often wonder what their relationship is like now because that's rough.

 K            You know, I'm wondering that too, because at first when you read something like that, I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy and all that. But then in the end, it is pretty sad because when your own parents have to kick you out of the house, but then at the same time, why would they want him to leave? Like why wouldn't they want him to stay anymore?

 D           Well, well, see now that's where it could become a little bit of a cultural thing 

 K            Right.

 D           Because in the United States, you know, you get to be a grown adult--you know, a lot of times adults will stay in their parents' home, sure--but they pay rent or they contribute in some way financially to the household. And apparently that was not happening in this situation. And the parents...I would say rightfully got a little frustrated. Like you can't pay, you won't pay, you won't contribute, then out. But I know it's not like that everywhere. And I'm assuming you might have a different take on this.

 K            yeah well I kind of see both sides to it but I don't -- you know I understand contributing-- obviously he didn't seem like he had a job or anything like that right so I think if it was me -- if it was my son, I wouldn't necessarily want him out of the house but I would want him to have a job to be productive person to you know to be I don't know to be just be active, to be busy, to contribute to society, not necessarily to my household. 

 D           Exactly.

 K            Because I'm thinking, well, right now we're raising our kid and we have to pay for everything anyway. So what's going to change? It's the same thing, right? 

 D           Right.

 K            Except he's older, and he’ll eat more probably. But it’s just – I feel like the issue is why is he still unemployed? Why is he -- you know, we don't know, did he go to college or did, does he have a degree or he, he just, you know, went through high school and does nothing until he's 30. So I feel like it's just a lot bigger issue here, but I feel like in my culture growing up, that would never happen.

 D           That's what I thought.

 K            So, and I know nowadays it's more of kids or young people, you know, young grown up adults are the ones who want to move out and have their own apartment or house or live separately. But like people like my mom or my parents or grandparents, of course, they wouldn't want their kids to move out. So it's usually -- it's very much family together. Family stays close. You know, you help each other, you take care of each other. There's, and there's no really -- I feel like everybody contributes. I've never heard of, you know, any of my either family relatives or friends saying that, you know, well, he doesn't contribute anything. It's just kind of given you, you feed everybody or whatever they can, they contribute or don't. So when my brother, when, after I moved to the United States, my brother still lived with my parents, and he went to school and college in our hometown. So even when my brother got married at first, they still all live together in the same place 

 D           Oh wow.

 K            because he it’s very expensive to rent or buy. I mean, it's so usually in Ukraine, it's, you know, parents will have an apartment or house and they kind of pass it on to their kids once they die. Right.

 D           Yeah.

 K            And here I notice in the States, you know, if parents have a house, they don't necessarily pass it on for the most part. They will, you know, either sell it or, you know, but in my culture, it's like they buy this house or they build a house or they buy an apartment and it's meant for the kids.

 D           Yeah. Well, you know, another thing I think is very different. I hear this and from a lot of people around the world that is very different about the United States. It feels like we are more of a, I'm going use this word, transient sort of situation where we move around a lot. 

 K            Yes.

 D           And I don't think that we have that culture of let me buy a house. I'm going to live my whole life in here and then it's going to go to my kids and then whatever.

 K            Yep.

 D           You know people will buy and sell houses multiple times in their life. So they don't have that attachment to the home like I think you might have there.

 K            Yep. That is very much true. Because I know that, you know, like my grandpa built a house and my mom, like we lived, my mom and my dad, my brother, we lived on the second floor because it was like a full  -- you know, there was a kitchen and bathroom and all that. And then my aunt and her family and my grandma, after my grandpa passed away, they lived on the first floor. So it was like, he built a house for his kids, for his families that were going to stay in town. 

 D           That's nice.

 K            Yeah, it's just that I think, I think things are changing though. 

 D           Hmm, yeah.

 K            I think more people are moving to bigger cities and a lot of people also, I noticed in recent -- I want to say a decade or two, a lot of people went abroad to get jobs and make money to help support families in Ukraine. So they would send money home to buy that apartment or house for their kids. 

 D           Right.

 K            And then when they come back, they would stay with them. So it's -- But I know in some other cultures to. It's not it's not unusual that families live together even after kids -- let's say -- graduate from college or school and get married and have kids they still live grandma and grandpa are right there.

 D           Yeah, I feel like that is the thing that I see most common with my students when I talk to them about their home life. It's like that. The grown kids are at home, and it's just so different from how it is here. You know, kids here, they just want to get out. They don't-- you know what I mean? They don't want to have any rules or anybody telling them what to do, but they kind of liked mom and dad's money paying for things. So there's that problem. So that might be why they don't get out immediately because it is expensive. 

 K            It is expensive.

 D           So yeah, I think they're staying here. They're staying with their parents much longer than they used to, but the expectation is always that they’ve got to contribute. There's none of this, you know, here's a nice word, freeloading, that you just...get everything for free and don't have to work for it. So.

 K            Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the thing is that I've never really experienced this issue growing up because I don't know, maybe it's the cultural mentality that, you know, a man has to provide, right? So a husband or father, if they still have a job, they will make sure that they provide and, you know, either food or utilities or like, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't ever that, oh, no, no, you, you don't buy anything. You just live here for free or whatever. They wouldn't necessarily pay rent, but everybody in the house would contribute towards.

 D           Yeah, like you said, there's just sort of an unspoken expectation. And I think that's sort of here too, that we would expect that someone would help out with something. So that's why the story was kind of funny because a 30 year old guy just thought he could really live for free and not do anything. And that's a little bit more than we like to see in this culture.

 K            Right. So funny thing is, but my husband and I sometimes talk about our son, you know, if he's going to go to college away or he wants to stay in here and he is at the age where he’s just pretty much happy being with us wherever we are. He wants to be there, right? Still at that age. We'll see how long that lasts.

 D           That's nice. Yeah. You’ve got to take that as long as you can.

 K            Yeah. So I remember when, you know, we moved into this house where we're at, I don't know, maybe a year. So he, he was looking in the basement and you've, you saw our basement is not finished, but you know, there's space in there and all that. And I remember we were doing something down there and he's kind of looking around and he goes, are you guys ever going to finish this basement? And we're like, um, why? He goes, I think this is the perfect place for me to stay.

 D           Okay, he's making plans.

 K            He’s already making plans. But you know, it's interesting because I like we both want him to go to college and all that. But my husband is very determined that he goes to college away somewhere like he doesn't want him because there's two universities here and I work at the college, you know, there's, there's a lot of places for him to go here. But my husband really wants him to go away. Like he wants him to leave home to experience that independence being by himself and you know, and all that.

 D           It's true because, you know, I made a little joke earlier about adulting is hard, but it really is. But they need that independence, that opportunity to figure stuff out, to learn how to do things. So for sure.

 K            Yeah, that's why I was wondering about this 30 year old guy. I was like that he's still at home and you know, who knows who knows what the story is behind it.

 D           Yeah. So yeah, anyway, I wanted to say that this article, I will link that in the show notes. As always, I forget to talk about the show notes, but you guys go to the show notes because we're going to have some vocabulary. The article that I'm going to link to -- I thought it had a lot of pretty good vocabulary. So I'll put something in there as well. And definitely check out those anytime you can see an article online, a blog post, things like that. Those are so great to read 

 K            Yes.

 D           because you're going to get a ton of great vocabulary expressions, things that we say, you know, informally. So definitely check those out. So yeah, that's that. This was a fun conversation. I wasn't exactly sure where we're going to go with this because, you know, as we've said before, these are unscripted conversations. So We just let it go where it takes us.

 K            That's right. And you know what, maybe we can do another episode on housing, because I think there's so much to it too, not necessarily like living in the same household or not, but just, you know, we started talking about apartments and the vocabulary about that and all the different things, but there's also so much about buying a house and finding a house and living in a house. So who knows, maybe it will lead us to another conversation about that someday.

 D           Absolutely, that sounds good. Well, until next time, here's to good coffee, good vibes, and great conversation. Cheers!

 K            Cheers!