Showers

By some sort of miracle (and the help of a dozen people) the three of us safely arrived at our school.  I thought life would get easier being at the school but that is not the case.  Many of the upcoming posts will be about the simple things that I just can’t master.  I suppose I should also take a moment here to apologize to every American I know.  If the French people didn’t stereotype Americans as loud, lazy, and stupid before I got here, I’m pretty sure I’ve done everything possible to validate that stereotype.

Within minutes of getting into the dorm I wanted to take a shower.  Now, I realize that this was probably a little ambitious of me.  After all, there are showers in the U.S. I still can’t figure out.  Not showering after 30-some hours of travel makes people do dumb things though, so there I was, preparing for my first shower in France.

The shower in front of me was not like any shower I’d ever had to figure out before.  This was more like one of those sinks you see in public bathrooms with the one knob that has to be pushed down.  So you use all your strength to push it in and, just as you start rinsing your hands, the handle pops back up.  Now you take your sudsy hands and try to get the water to start again but due to the soap on your hands, your hands fly off the knob, causing you to punch the wall in front of you.  Naturally, you resort to using your forearms this time but the only way you can reach now is to prop your stomach against the edge of the wet sink.  You eventually get the suds all washed off your hands, only to find your stomach has absorbed all the water off the sink and your shirt has an unexplainable large wet spot for the next thirty minutes.

That’s pretty much what it’s like to shower in my room.  I push the button and start washing my hair.  Then, just as I start to enjoy the nice, warm shower, the water shuts off.  Shivering, I hit the button again and then the whole cycle repeats.  This happens over and over again until I decide that the shower has won that day’s battle.  The other option, of course, is to figure out how to shower using only one arm to wash myself and the other arm propped against the button.   Today I tried this technique.  It went something like this:

• Use left arm to wash right half of body while body weight is pushing on right elbow to get the knob to stay in.

• Switch.

• Switch back to get the forgotten right shoulder.

• Switch again to get the unreachable spot on back.

• Use both arms to get unreachable spot.

• Shower shuts off.

Also, my first shower resorted in not only my entire bathroom flooding but also puddles of water in my room.