Monday Through Friday Dirt

To kick this off right you need to know several things about our life here.

Number one, we get two cubic meters of water a week. That is about 500 gallons of water. When its out, its out. So ever Wednesday the water comes, and it will fill up the tank as long as there is space for it. That means as long as we use the water on Wednesday it keeps coming. So theoritically we can use as much water on Wednesday and never run out, because it will refill itself on Wednesday. So Wednesday is know very lovingly around our house as Water Day. Water Day means the laundry is done and we can take long showers and leave the water on when we brush our teeth and all sorts of great, wasteful things.

Number two, we have central heating here in this house. It's not at all like central heating in the states though. It's a radiator system. You flip a switch and the boiler kicks in and burns diesel fuel and heats up the water and sends it through the pipes and heats the radiators in the rooms, if you turn them on, and then there is heat. It also heats up the water so you can have hot water in the kitchen and the shower. We don't turn in on but maybe a couple hours a day because it takes alot of fuel to do that. We have a 250 gallon diesel tank and to fill it up costs around 450 dollars. savvy?

Number three, it gets cold here. I know you think Middle East and you think of deserts and camels and terrorists, but it gets cold. We had three snow days from school last year. It is COLD!!! So heat in a house is a must, considering they don't use insulation!

Tayyib, here we go.

Monday - the family bathes. Noah, B, me, the works. Good day.
Tuesday - wake up late, go to bed exhausted. No showers. But no problem, because tomorrow is WATER DAY!! yay! Hot, long showers for everybody.
Wednesday - 8pm, we flip the switch because the house is cold and we want hot water for showers. 8:30 the radiators are heating up, so we are sitting watching a movie. After the movie we'll take showers. 9pm, the switch is still on and the radiators are cold. Booty cold. Check the water in the sink....cold. in the shower.....really cold. Must have run out of fuel, but its too late to do anything about it. So go to bed cold and dirty.
Thursday - get ahold of the guy to buy more fuel. Get it. Turn on the fuel that night, because again...it's cold and we are dirty. Nothing. It is a mystery how the water from the shower could be below zero and not formed ice. Again too late to do anything. We go to bed very cold and very dirty.
Today - get ahold of our landlord to see what to do about the problem with the boiler or the pump. He says don't worry, He will come, I just need to bleed the line of air. Okay, so we wait. He finally gets there around dark. Did I mention we are still cold and dirty? He comes and fixes it and now. I am sitting in my living room warm and very, very clean. Not only that, but my entire family. We are an entire family of clean, non-smelly, warm, non-shivering, happy, smiling-again people.

No, this isn't a normal week. Usually we are clean people. But I thought you might like to here the story.