A Shower

6 April 2011

Shower #1

Today is Sunday. It’s been a full week. Today I spent most of the afternoon in bed with a cold. My host mom thinks it’s because of the wind. (I’m going to call my host mom Z from here on out)

There is no central heat (aka no heat) in my house. The only time the “great” room has been warm was on Wednesday evening when there the wood-burning cooking stove was fired up as well as the wood-burning water boiler near the shower room. A cement room the size of a large closet. Both rooms got quite toasty. The host families have been instructed to offer volunteers showers more than once a week. This night was an example of the difficulty of communication in two different languages.

After talking about Wed. night being shower night, there was a problem with water getting to the boiler – it didn’t. So I understood that the shower would have to wait until the next day. I was fine with that because I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Just to make sure I understood correctly, I called my language teacher to interpret for me. She also talked to Z. My teacher said yes, there was a problem and I could have a shower the next day after classes after the problem was fixed. Great. A short while later Z goes and stokes up the boiler. Hmmmm. The only reason she would be stoking it up is for a shower. And because of the effort and cost in wood, it would not be for just one of us. Its 9:15 and I’d happily crawl into bed, but no, the water will be hot by 9:45. At this point I think that Z might have interpreted my desire to contact my teacher because I wanted to complain about her instead of just wanting to clarify communication. So she made her best effort to make sure I got my shower. And I was on the verge of a melt-down because I was so tired. Miscommunications are on both sides of the language difference.

I was in the shower by 9:45 and pleasantly surprised that the cement room was warm because of the heat generated from the fire in the boiler (there is a reason they call it a boiler). It looks like it might hold 20 gallons or so, so I got my hair wet, turned off the water, shampooed, turned on the water, rinsed, turned off the water to put conditioner on and wash myself, turn water on…..you get the idea. I had plenty of water and I hope she did too.

I got out of the shower and then there was a lot of concern on Z’s part that I could not go to bed with wet hair. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but it wouldn’t have been the first time. The up side was that she pulled a space heater out of storage and turned it on in my unheated bedroom. Yeah! She brushed it out for me standing over the heater and after getting about 75% dry I was allowed to go to bed. I unplugged the heater and happily climbed into my listing bed with my sleeping bag and 4 blankets provided by Z. Once I get warmed up, all is good.