Going on Day 5 with no running water

And starting to get a little cranky about it. Yes we realize that we are lots better off than many in this country. Yes, we have our basic needs met. Yes, we have been backpackers and campers and so have been known to go without running water for weeks at a time.

And %^$# - I want a shower! Maybe even more than that, I want to clean this apartment so we can start to settle in and feel more at home.

We have discovered that there was some sort of overflow which caused damage to the electrical panel, which controls the water pump. This morning when I went out for my cafe sua da (Vietnamese iced coffee), a man came on the elevator at floor 2 looking quite refreshed and well coiffed. He said "Hello" with little hint of an accent so I dove in.

"Do you have water?" I asked eagerly. He looked at me blankly, having apparently reached the end of his flawless English. In for a penny, in for a pound. I barely had time to pantomime the showering routine - face turned to the water, soaping up and shampooing - before the elevator doors were opening at the ground floor. "Yes", he gasped before escaping (somewhat rapidly, I thought) out into the open courtyard. And I hadn't even shaved.

It's hard not being able to talk to people. We have to rely on others for our information. We've been lucky to have a few people at the school who have been willing to call our housing management company to get more information for us. That's how we know as much as we do. But we don't know when it will be fixed. We don't know what the delay is. We don't know if we can expect this to happen frequently. We don't know if this is an issue we can break our lease over.

Our landlord, through interpreters, has been nice. He even gave us a key to another apartment he owns in the building so we could try the bathroom there. Unfortunately, it is only one floor down and the water pressure there was only negligibly better, if at all. Meanwhile, we can't shower and we can't flush and we can't wash. We don't know whether to stick around because it will be fixed any minute or to throw in the towel on this apartment or to run away to the beach until next week. The beach solution is looking good.

Meanwhile, we miss our dog. We miss our cat. We miss our friends. We miss our clear, cold well water. We are all getting weepy and falling apart over the seemingly smallest things. This cross-cultural stuff is hard and exhausting. We know a whole lot less than we don't know. And there are new wonders everyday. Tonight we had pretty good pizza for dinner - a little taste of home.