Another fun Ecuadorian anecdote presented itself this morning. As I was taking my first step out of the shower, soaking wet and towel-less, there was an explosion- there is no other word to describe it. This explosion came from underneath the sink, and before I knew it the bathroom was filled with thick white steam. With an incredibly rapid heartbeat and adrenaline forcing its way through my veins, I struggled to wrap a towel around myself while answering my host mom's frantic questions and saving my clothing from the now soaking wet floor of the bathroom, for a flood of water had followed the initial surge of steam. Finally somewhat covering myself and failing to scream the requisite answers in broken Spanish through the closed door, I yanked it open only to allow the still flooding water to rush into the hallway. Ines immediately started to scream and put towels at the door in an attempt to save the apartment. Ignoring the fact that the water was still pouring out from what looked to be the water heater, so unless we fixed that there was really no point in mopping up the soon to be inches of water, she continued with the towels while I awkwardly tried to help, still half-naked. Finally she decided that the quick towel work wasn´t really doing the job and called the supervisor/guard from downstairs. At this point I also decided that my tiny towel would not be sufficient and hurriedly tried to make myself decent before the guard found his way upstairs. This job was more difficult than you might think considering there was water seeping into my bedroom's wall-to-wall carpeting and the pile of towels in the hallway made it difficult to shut the door. Nevertheless, I succeeded. The guard came up and quickly reached into a hidden, magical cabinet to turn off the water. At this point we probably had a half an inch of water layering the entire apartment- quite a nightmare.

While this had been going on, I thought that I heard my host mom tell me the reason for this catastrophe was that I was in the shower for too long. Because she was upset and we were in the midst of chaos, I chose to take the high road and ignore this comment. This high road was easier to take than you might think because I knew that my shower was not too long. At home, yes, I know that when I shower I am not being the most environmentally friendly with my water usage. However, here in Ecuador, I rush through my showers as quickly as possible due to the lack of hot water. In fact this very morning in the shower, as the water shifted from lukewarm to downright cold, interspersed with (if I was lucky) a few seconds of absolutely scalding, skin-peelingly hot, I was trying to count how many more times I would have to go through this before I left. So I was confident in the fact that no, my shower was not too long.

During our hour and a half clean up of the apartment, a time I had woken up early to give myself to prepare for my final exam, Ines again mentioned my shower length and its cause for the flooding. This time I could not ignore it, so I told her quite bluntly that my shower had been 10 minutes, if that. 'Oh, sí, sí, ¡yo sé!' she agreed with me. 'Y por eso no estoy diciendo nada a ti, sólo digo que la única razón por la situación podría ser mucho tiempo en el baño- tiene que ser un ratito.' Okay, Ines, sure. (Of course, by saying this my guilty conscious is desperately trying to rationalize, hoping that my actions weren't the ones to ruin her beautiful wooden floorboards.)

And this is why I popped a squat in the empty shower this afternoon after school *edited to clarify that apparently confusing phrase- I urinated in the shower. Nothing more. The toilet was full of exploded-heater-gunk and there are no public bathrooms in the apartment building. Really, what did you expect me to do? All human beings urinate and I'm sure that many of you have in fact done so during your morning shower. This situation was not that different. I really don't see anything wrong with it. I had a problem: needing to pee sans any available toilet. I solved that problem: peeing in the shower and then washing the shower out with a water bottle. I stand by what I did.*

And this is also the reason that I am now flushing the toilet with a bucket of water. I feel like I am back in the Dominican Republic, when I spent four weeks doing service work in a very poor community with absolutely no running water. Every time we went to the bathroom we had to fill up a smaller bucket from the gigantic communal water bucket; it was a nice little announcement of what we were about to do, aka not the most comfortable situation for the dozen or so 16 year old girls on the trip. Anyway, lessons like these come in handy. If I hadn't learned how to bucket flush back then, I probably would have had no idea what my host mom was telling me to do and no idea how to go about doing it. Fortunately, I am now basically a plumber. And I am also that much more ready to return home, where I can live without the risk of being violently sprayed with black-water-heater gunk as I pull back the shower curtain.