put your right leg in, put your right leg out, put your right leg in, and shake it all about...

take a shower in China with only cold water, that's what it's all about!! well friends, i will make this my one post on the subject of showering, let me start with general background knowledge. The hot water that is supplied to my dorm for showering is the same hot water which is used to heat the building, in other words, it's stinking hot. Secondly, it should be noted that taking a shower in my dorm is much more comical than any movie or sitcom has ever been on the subject of wild swings in water temperature; given that the hot water can be boiling-ly (word?) hot those swings from really hot to really cold without touching the knobs can be pretty interesting (and painful). Thirdly, the hot water turns off at 10pm; which in China must mean 9:49, 9:52, 9:54, 9:55, the actual times according to my clock that it has been turned off while I, your strictly punctual servant, tried to take a shower before 10. In addition to the hot water being really hot, the cold water is really cold which makes each of these 4 experiences among the most traumatic of my short life. For future reference, when caught in this situation, the 'hokey-pokey method for cold water showering' is quite effective and can keep shivering to a minimum. So while showering here can be as much of an adventure as ordering dinner by pointing to random groups of chinese characters on a menu, it is possible to do it successfully; i think over the last two months i have become much more sensitive to changes in water pressure, thus being able to anticipate those wild temperature swings and flee to the back of the shower until the craziness ends. I will tell you the first time that they turned the hot water off i stood in the back of the shower for 10 minutes (no lie) psyc-ing myself up before i could enter the frigid waters, but that was before the Hokey-Pokey method...thanks pre-school for giving me all the tools i needed for success!

*i fully realize that this post makes me sound like a spoiled american; let me add that i am grateful that i have hot water at all, as there is none in the chinese student dorms at all. (there is a student bathhouse on campus that has hot water for them to use, though in practice this means that they don't shower very often)