There is a hot water heater in every bathroom and it has a tap about knee height on the bathroom wall. There's another tap on the other side of the bathroom for the cold water. Some bathrooms have shower heads installed, but some don't. As in some other countries, the whole bathroom is the shower and there's a drain in the corner of the room. When you turn the shower on, everything in the bathroom gets wet. Toilet paper alert!
Here people take 'bucket baths' (my name, not theirs). You fill up a bucket from the hot water and cold water taps, get wet with the ubiquitous handled cups hanging on the side of every bucket, soap up, rinse yourself off. It took some real grit to bathe when I first got here. The challenge of standing in an unheated, tiled space pouring water over myself was a bit daunting. Baths are finished in a hurry.
Finally the day came that I thought it was warm enough that I could actually stand naked for a bit and take a real shower. I turned on the tap for the shower and waited for the water to warm up. Alas, the hot water heater is not connected to any other tap in the apartment, not the shower, not the kitchen sink, nothing.
In English class, we talked about taking =a= shower or =a= bath and I asked the students if they ever took showers. Yes, they said, during the summer when it's really hot. At that time, the water which is in a giant cistern on the roof is also somewhat warm. However, summer here is like one big shower. It rains constantly during the monsoon season.
Here people take 'bucket baths' (my name, not theirs). You fill up a bucket from the hot water and cold water taps, get wet with the ubiquitous handled cups hanging on the side of every bucket, soap up, rinse yourself off. It took some real grit to bathe when I first got here. The challenge of standing in an unheated, tiled space pouring water over myself was a bit daunting. Baths are finished in a hurry.
Finally the day came that I thought it was warm enough that I could actually stand naked for a bit and take a real shower. I turned on the tap for the shower and waited for the water to warm up. Alas, the hot water heater is not connected to any other tap in the apartment, not the shower, not the kitchen sink, nothing.
In English class, we talked about taking =a= shower or =a= bath and I asked the students if they ever took showers. Yes, they said, during the summer when it's really hot. At that time, the water which is in a giant cistern on the roof is also somewhat warm. However, summer here is like one big shower. It rains constantly during the monsoon season.
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