The Beauty of Inconvenience

So remember me talking about the shower and the bathroom? Well, I think it’s time to tell some stories about that.

WARNING: The following stories and descriptions contain some rather grotesque details. If you would like to keep on living in the fantasy that all other countries are like America, please do not read any further.

The bathroom itself is a small square room with many functions. It serves as a shower (meaning we don’t have a separate shower stall—the bathroom IS the shower stall), a place where we wash our clothes in the small washing machine, a place where we brush our teeth and look into the only mirror here, and where we relieve ourselves of internal waste. It is also where we keep our bag of used toilet paper because we are not allowed to flush it down our small toilet [note: ‘keep’ meaning when the bag is full we throw it away… we are not actually keeping our used toilet paper around for fun]. It also serves as a gateway to sewage smell which I find rather annoying at times, but with the help of lavender air-spray have been quite content. I will say that the bathroom is ingenious for its multi-purpose set up in such a small space, and I praise the Chinese for being so practical.

Now, our shower. It is not directly attached to the wall, but the wall has a place where we can set the showerhead while we shower. When I tried doing that my first day I notice that it sprayed directly at the door, thus likely causing water to seep into our bedroom. Yeah, no good. So, instead I have to hold the showerhead myself and set it down when I have to use my hands. The nice thing is that because the bathroom is so small, it stays very warm with all of the steam from the hot shower! Which leads me to the next point—our shower in particular doesn’t seem to understand that we need the hot water and the cold water on at the same time in order to be comfortable. When we turn red knob then the water starts to turn hot—hallelujah! But, when we turn the other knob for cold water, the showerhead acts likes it’s going to explode. I’m not sure if there’s any other way I can describe it. I haven’t yet tried to turn on the cold water alone, but I do know that even after turning down the hot water as much as possible, the cold water still makes the showerhead go crazy. It must be a water pressure thing. At any rate, the nice thing is that our water takes so long to really heat up so only by the time I am about done with my shower does the heat become too much. I think it’s a wonderful thing, really—this way not only does the whole bathroom itself get very warm, but I am forced to take a quick shower (something I have always struggled with).

Now, our washing machine. This morning my roommate Lacey and I had the greatest triumph! We got our old foreign washing machine to turn on and actually wash our towels! This adventure made my morning totally worth being awake for!

First, after putting our towels and soap in, we tried pressing every button on the machine. Nothing came on. We made sure that the water was hooked up to the machine, but still nothing. All of the buttons have only Chinese characters on them, so we didn’t even know what buttons were for what. However, our thinking was that if we could just get it to turn on in the first place then we could experiment with everything else. Luckily, my friend Eliza happened to be on Skype while Lacey and I pondered over our predicament. Eliza said that she would try to get someone over facebook who could read the characters for us. Then, as the time went on she asked us if it was plugged in.

Me: “yes, yes we already checked to make sure that the water pipes were securely twisted into the washing machine!”

And then it dawned on me. We hadn’t yet tried plugging it into the wall to get electricity. Because, I guess electrical appliances like washing machines need electricity to run.

……………………………

I’m not blonde, really.

Anyway, we had a good laugh about it and ended up pressing the right buttons to get our towels washed! Now they are currently hanging up on our coat-rack thingy to dry because the Chinese don’t generally use dryers. I miss having a dryer, but I find the energy efficiency of letting things air-dry kind of comforting actually—kind of like "going green" or something. Plus, in the winter time basically all my sweaters have to be air-dried anyway, so this way I don’t run the risk of shrinking any of my clothes! It’s very convenient actually!

Now, about the smell. Our room actually smells quite lovely every time we walk in the door now! We simply keep the door to the bathroom shut and put something on top of the main drains to keep the odor out. This leaves us with our wonderful lavender spray making the air smell beautiful. We didn’t know what to do at first and I believe the first night was a little frustrating as the smell would always be there, but be worse sometimes and better others. However, one of the ILP (ILP is the program I’m with) people suggested we keep our door closed which helped a lot. After that I learned from a very useful source who learned from another very useful source that the sewage smell comes from the drain and all we need to do is cover it whenever we can in order to contain the smell. And now our room smells like lavender :)

Overall, I’d say our set-up is quite nice and I’m enjoying all of the little previously unknown perks immensely! [note: this post may seem to some a bit sarcastic, but in all honesty I’m being very blunt about how I feel. I thoroughly enjoy making the most out of the small inconveniences we have here—it’s like a game and I think I might be winning!]