House Tour #4

We'll end our house tour with the bathroom. I could show you our second bedroom too, but it's boring, being used as a storage room until Scott comes back, and messy. So we'll skip it. Just a reminder too that if you click on the photo it will enlarge.

We're fortunate, as we've mentioned, to have running water in the house. There's only one temperature, lukewarm, but that's fine. We have a water heater attached to the shower, so we turn it on when we're ready to shower and it heats up instantly. The only time it fails us is when the electricity is off. Then we get to choose between a chilly shower right away or a warm one later. As we'd be taking the shower in the dark, we usually opt to wait. As you can see from the photo, there's no shower curtain. Behind our orange laundry tub you can also see the large squeegee on a pole, which we use to push the overspray to the floor drain after we're done. Since the floor and lower walls are tile, this works fine. They had the same method in Jordan when we lived there.

Before we start to shower we sit and scrub our feet. Someone joked that when you leave Uganda it takes six weeks to get the dirt off. It's not really a joke. We scrub hard and get the top layer off, but a lot is just ground in I guess. Paul had showered last night before we went out to a dinner theater with some friends. The only walking we did was a short distance to catch a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to meet our friends. Paul was wearing socks and close-toed shoes. When we got home at the end of the evening, his feet were dirty. Magic!

On another subject, I taught my first English class yesterday. Solomon, the young man who is the main teacher, had worked out a detailed lesson plan for me. He wanted me to teach the women the numbers 1-20. I was to say the numbers for them to repeat, have each woman say them, have them match them, write them in words, etc. Then we were to do basic addition like 2+2=4. Solomon and I were chatting before the women arrived and I asked him what he had taught the class the day before. They had done multiplication and 4 digit addition - in English! So why was I teaching them the names of the numbers? I had no idea and didn't want to offend him by asking. Since it was my first time out, I decided I would just follow his plan. Those dear women patiently repeated the numbers to me and dutifully wrote them down in their notebooks. And here's a final twist to the story: a white friend of mine talked to these women that evening, and they told her the class was difficult. What?! There are obviously some things I don't have figured out yet. Anyway, it was enjoyable, and next week Solomon wants me to teach them verb tenses, parts of the body, furniture and food. Since that's material for about four months, I should have plenty to do.