You Put ALL The Toilet Paper Where?

Trip Start Sep 01, 2007
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8
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Trip End Dec 01, 2007


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Flag of Brazil  ,
Thursday, September 6, 2007

Early this morning around 6:15 a.m., sitting on our second story veranda, surrounded by a variety of flowering trees, I watched a blue-grey hummingbird take a bath. It had rained fairly hard very early in the morning so the leaves of the bitter almond tree had not yet been dried by the warm rays of the sun and were still wet with fresh rain. The hummingbird was flitting about, taking a dip in first one and then another. Nestled in the dark large green leaves are stems of what appear to be flowers not yet in bloom so I wonder if it was just a bath or there is also some sort of delicious nectar in the fresh spring rains waiting on its leaves.     
 
There are some things in foreign countries that are hard to get used to after all our small luxuries that we take for granted back home in the USA. The bathroom is one. We have a very nice beautifully decorated bathroom with a nice sink, shower and toilet. There is no hot water for the sink. So shaving is with cold water. It works. It's just not as nice. There is also a rule for the toilet. There is no flushing of toilet paper or other things such as feminine hygiene items down to toilet. Only our natural body processes are allowed to be flushed. It seems that Brazilian plumbing is not up to our standards and made with much smaller pipes and in many places water is not readily available, so the long and strong tradition of not flushing paper articles down the toilet still stands. There is a small covered basket next to the toilet for such things. And every day the maid comes and cleans it out. I think the paper is burned. No matter how many times I go it still seems wrong not to flush certain things down the toilet, never to be seen or smelled again! The other is the shower. Brazilians do not have hot water heaters in their homes so the hot water, if you can call it that, comes out of an electric shower head. We keep checking to see if ours is on. The best it can do is turn ice water into briskly cold water. So showers are fast and we shivering a bit and totally refreshed. I have to say this, it conserves on water and the heat bill!
 

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