Water, Water Everywhere......

In the past, our domestic water supply was not among the top ten things in my daily thoughts. I used to go to the tap, turn it on, and drinkable water would come out. In the back of my mind, I knew that we are fortunate in the USA to have good, drinkable water issue forth from the tap. But tap water wasn't high on my list of concerns.

Here, water has become a BIG DEAL. I think about it every time I touch the faucet. The water that comes from the tap is not drinkable. Officially, it is "hard" and "needs to be boiled before drinking." This has a few repercussions, like what to do when brushing your teeth, washing dishes, washing produce, etc.

Here's how we are dealing with it so far. Every morning, two large thermoses (thermosi?) of "boiled water" appear outside our door. We reserve some of this water for dishes (and let the dishes soak for awhile so as to avoid frying the flesh from our hands). We transfer the remainder to our huge teakettle (this is China, after all), let it cool, then transfer the water into plastic bottles. We put some of the bottles into the fridge for drinking. One bottle goes into the bathroom for a toothbrush rinse. When I came down with a cold, we decided we needed to divide our drinking bottles, so mine are the label off, Cal's are the label on. (This did not have the fully desired effect. Cal still caught my cold.)

We have not had much produce except for items that can be peeled, but we did soak some apples and peaches in a mild bleach solution. So far, we are still alive. Yummm, clorox.