Water Woes

Our last semester in Dominica is flying by! I've been consistently busy this semester, which is why it's flying! The first major exam of the semester was Monday and afterwards we went to "Beach Bash". People were swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, scuba diving, tubing, grilling out, and just basically enjoying island life! It was one of the first pretty days without rain and we had a ton of fun! They haven't emailed official grades yet, but they always email the answer keys and Ryan's answers and the breakdown of subjects and I always have a great time grading it for Ryan. He did unbelievably good and so we are thanking God! I'm still sick. I think I've got the whooping cough. Monday night we all went out to dinner for Katy's birthday. I was in charge of the cake. Tuesday morning I woke up and we had no water. I was really confused because it wasn't even raining. I later find out that it is only our apartment that doesn't have water. I know everybody reading this in America is thinking, "oh, that stinks", but let me tell you that it doesn't just stink, it completely interrupts everything that is normal in your day to day life. You get up and brush your teeth using bottled water (not a big deal) but then you want to use the toilet...and then you want to take a shower...and then you want to wash your hands....Finally you just sit down, put hand sanitizer all over your hands and arms and try to decide how to look decent when you've got that sweaty look and you can't take a shower. My Bible study meets at my apartment every Tuesday night, but we still had no water. I ran up to campus and took a shower at the gym. I had to flush the toilet (when we're having guests, I usually like to clean up a lot more than just flushing!) and it took me 20 minutes to fill the toilet up with enough water to flush. When everybody got to the house Ryan announced that we had a "no poop" rule. That's how you like to welcome people into your home. Oh well, everyone here understands. It's 35 hours since they turned the water off and we still have no water. I made a chocolate trifle for Bible study (= dirty dishes). After everyone left I had to make 2 cakes for a baby shower I went to this morning. This meant I had to make 2 batches of buttercream icing and I had no water to wash out my bowls, measuring cups, spoons, nothing. The kitchen was a disaster. I had food coloring stains all over my hands with no way of washing it off. Every time I wanted to change icing colors I had to clean the icing tips with napkins since there was no water. It was the hugest hassle! Of course, I couldn't leave dishes covered in sugar and chocolate sitting out all night because we would have had every bug in Dominica in our kitchen. So I stood at the sink for well over and hour and washed dishes with a sponge, soap, lysol wipes, and bottles of water. You know how when you're washing something that has butter or shortening on it it's really greasy? Imagine washing about 30 dishes covered in that with no hot running water - just room temperature bottled water. My back was killing me, I was burning up, and I was really, really wanting to take a shower (that wasn't happening)! Anyway, you get the point and you're tired of hearing me complain, so I'll move on. I'll post pictures of the baby shower cakes when I get them. Someone else took pictures for me. I'm really excited because I'm coming to Nashville in 2.5 weeks! I'll just be there for a couple of days and then Mom and I are going to Miami to apartment shop. I'm planning to early vote, which I'm very excited about! I look forward to voting every chance I get. :) I think I think my vote counts more than it actually does. Some people don't bother voting if they live in a county that always goes Republican/Democrat because they don't think their vote will make a difference. I have the opposite problem. I think my vote makes the difference! :) Ha! And you know how a lot of people always feel like they need to lose weight and always seem to be dieting? I've always been the opposite there too. Somehow, I haven't noticed how much weight I've gained. I was at the gym last week and I got on the scales and do you know how much weight I've gained since our wedding in July 2006? Well, I was shocked!!! How did I not notice? I knew I liked wearing sundresses, but I didn't realize it was probably because my pants weren't exactly fitting the same. I'm going to be working on that! I'm supposed to be baking bread for orders for tomorrow right now, but since I have no water (or clean dishes for that matter), I'm blogging instead. I'm also having our Bible study group over for breakfast Friday morning (12 people). I hope we have water by then so I don't have to cancel!!! Ryan and I are hopefully going to have fun this weekend since he just got a big test behind him! Well, I'm going to go dump 10 gallons of water in the back of the toilet so I can flush it! Oh, I forgot to mention that I gave my new neighbor a cooking lesson the other night. We made poppyseed chicken casserole, which calls for sour cream. Since that is difficult to find here, I showed her how we could make our own. 1 cup sour cream = 3/4 cup buttermilk and 1/4 cup butter. Before we could make our sour cream we had to make our buttermilk. 1 cup buttermilk = 1 cup whole milk and 1 T vinegar or lemon juice. If you're ever cooking and you don't have an ingredient, google it because you can probably make it yourself!

**If you checked this post earlier you may notice that I edited it. :) After we got water back and I took a shower I was feeling much happier and thought that maybe I was a little too grumpy in the original post. The newer version is meant to be a little lighter.