a bidet in the life

Setting up a life here is harder than it should be since we're both sick. I think it's mostly the adjustment to the smog and exhaust of a city, but regardless we spend most of our time indoors channel surfing for subtitled American TV shows and 90's movies (Lake Placid has been my personal favorite thus far), which isn't too bad as avoiding the outdoors is the only proven way to avoid stepping in dog crap on the street.

Fortunately we'll be able to sleep in this weekend as our first week of classes has come to an end. I've been enjoying my teacher, Silvina, with whom I gossip about reality TV and why NJ is reasoned to be the armpit of America (a false stereotype, of course) while adding crucial words to my vocabulary like baile de caño (pole dance), sirenita (mermaid), palta (avocado), cancha (court; not to be confused with concha), and perturbadura (disturbing).

The first few days of class I got home 3 hours before Kelly, which led to an awkward period with nothing to do, especially since I rely on her for most TV channel-scouting. So I took to inventorying the apartment: a good selection of pots, no frying pans...found a pad of paper in the living room and a Guía T and some extra pillows in the front closet. It was like finding hidden presents. The bathroom yielded nothing too novel, but then I thought, "What if I go through the rest of my stay in this apartment and never turn on the bidet, only to discover at the end that it never worked all along and the owners make me pay to repair it?" That and, "Hey I wonder how a bidet works."

So I fiddled about. At first it appeared to work like a hybrid of a sink and a water fountain: little gush of water and a drain with stopper. I tinkered with the knobs, deducing quickly which were meant for temperature and which for water height when its non-gradual increase hit me in the face. I couldn't turn it off fast enough as I had stepped back from the shock. For an instant I was baffled and didn't know what to do. Eventually, I boldly moved back in to adjust the knob in the face of the geiser. It was the wrong direction. The floor flooded. How one can actually use a bidet is beyond me. I admitted defeat and took a nap.