The Refrigerator dilemma

This is the size of our refrigerator. No, not the one we only put wine or pop in, but the ONLY one we have, where all of our food must go.  Actually this one might even be a little bigger, but ours has a small freezer! Our fridge is hidden in one of our bottom cabinets. When we first got here, I was freaking out that we didn't have a fridge but a quick review of our cabinet space revealed that I was wrong.

At first, I was shocked and wondering how we were going to survive like this. As I looked around some more, I realized we also did not have an oven. AN OVEN. What kind of people live in this country?!! So we decided that we would make do with our tiny fridge (or else we would have to put a bigger, albeit not full size fridge, in our living room-which I was not cool with). We decided that we would NOT make do without an oven so we did purchase a fantastic, near American sized oven. Best large purchase we have made here. But back to the fridge...

So, the fridge presents a few problems. We cannot fit a 1.5 liter coke bottle (no, they don't have 2 liters here) in it without taking out the bottom shelf. Anytime we have friends over, half of our food has to come out to make room for drinks. I can't keep my tens of bottles of condiments in the door that have been there for 5 years like I did back home (Meg, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about). I go to the grocery store nearly every day. I have now started keeping my eggs out of the refrigerator and on the counter to make room for something else. Don't worry, it seems safe. The eggs are not refrigerated in the store. We haven't died yet so until that happens, I'll take my extra fridge space any day. One day, the light in our fridge went out but several months later when I was trying to shove some things in, it popped back on.  More often than not, we have to put something in the fridge and then quickly shut it and give it one more hip nudge to make sure it stays closed. Some days I go crazy, wishing for a real fridge again. I long for my friend's medium sized fridge.

But most days, I make it. Most days the fridge fits just enough. It's another part of our adventure here. One day, when I have a whole room that is refrigerated, just to compensate for the time I missed out on, I will look back on these days and laugh. For now though, I'll just keep checking to make sure the fridge door is shut completely and pray that we don't get salmonella from our eggs.