Ou est le Doublevay Say?

Bathrooms are much more utilitarian in Russia. Since everyone lives in a small apartment, the bathroom is similar to a garage or attic and becomes a catch-all for miscellaneous storage. Logical, but it really threw me the first time I walked in. Part of the reason Americans use so much more water than anyone else is probably because of how clean, shiny and fun our bathrooms are to spend time in. You want to take a 30 min shower and fiddle with your new sunscreen and your electric toothbrush in front of the big mirror and the fluffy towels and the candles.

We don't have hot water right now. This is a seasonal, geographically rotating normality. If I understand correctly, much of the pipe/water maintenance is done in the summer when weather conditions are nicest. Certain sections of the city will be without hot water for indeterminate lengths of time. (There are official estimates. Amazingly, these are rarely accurate.) Once work in a section is completed, maintenance moves to the next area, and they get to freeze for awhile.

For the first week, I took cold showers at home, insisting it was no problem as I didn't want my host mother to have to heat a bunch of water on the stove to try to fix it. Invigorating. Remniscent of camping. I even found a mosquito who wanted to keep me company. OK, so I miss my American bathroom.

My shower routine goes like this: I stand in the tub and pick up the detachable shower head. I lean over and rinse just my hair. I shampoo, rinse it out, do sort of a quick general scrub, and jump out of the bathtub. There is a wooden platform stacked on the end of the tub, with 3 or 4 pots sitting on it. So there I am, standing in the bathtub. And I'm trying to wash my hair without running into the pots, or dripping on the floor because there is no shower curtain or anything and if I move my head in the wrong direction it will send water drops flying over the edge onto the floor, and if I move myself in the wrong direction I will run into the pots.