Water, Water Everywhere...Except in our Apartment

Just one more week until we are back in America! Never before have I been so excited about the luxury of having running water all day long. Of course, I haven't before been in a place where the water is off about 18 out of 24 hours. Imagine being able to flush the toilet and wash your hands any time! Juliana can paint and play in the dirt and do messy activities because we can actually clean her up afterward. Kevin can take a shower when he gets back from playing sports all hot and sweaty. We won't have to plan ahead to get the laundry and dishes done in the short “water windows.” If our child should throw up in the middle of the night, we can actually clean her up (unlike last week when we had no water).

Juliana's idea of a fun playtime

After a couple of months of this, we are getting better at filling up basins and jugs so we can wash hands and flush toilets during the day, but if we forget it's a real pain. Usually we have water from 7-8am, 12-1pm, 6-7pm, and about 9-11pm. We have finally been remembering to fill up Juliana's tub with water before dinnertime so we can give her a bath before bed. After playing outside every afternoon in the heat and dirt, she definitely needs it! Laundry is trickier. I have to remember to put it in as soon as the water comes on so it can finish before the water turns off again. Our washer may be small but it takes forever to fill up! Fortunately, it's so dry here that we could hang up laundry at 9pm and it would probably be dry by bedtime.

We live in on the edge of the desert, so if our lack of water was due to actual water shortage, I wouldn't mind it so much. Saving water is a good thing, and nothing helps water conservation like not having any water to waste! However, our water is not off because of water conservation. It is only consistently off during the springtime, and it's because they are busy flooding the grass. Not watering – flooding.

The typical “watering” method seems to be: Place an extra-large hose on one spot in the ground. Eight hours later, move hose to a new location. It makes no sense to me. And yes, sometimes when I see all that nice water making a mess out of the ground, puddling on the sidewalk, and forming lovely mud playgrounds for children, I'm a little bitter that we can't wash our hands.

Our friends in another neighborhood have had similar water issues, but some in a third neighborhood always have water, so it seems to depend on where you live. My tutor said the water is always off in their dormitory as well. “It seems strange,” she said. “The grass gets lots of water but the people don't have any!”

(I know you are on the edge of your seats for all of my stunning parenting wisdom in the posts I mentioned before, but those will have to wait until after finals, which I am obviously busy studying for...)