Yes, I realize that it has been a few days since I have posted, but honestly, it has been one of the strangest weeks of my life.  Really, everyday in Istanbul has been getting increasingly difficult to deal with.  Some of the things were just little things, such as the fact that I have not had a hot shower since I left Buenos Aires.  In Istanbul at both places where I stayed the showers would sometimes be warmish and then cold water would come until just a bit more warm water would trickle out of the shower.  Ok, I get it that this is not a super huge problem in and of itself, but since this has been the first real winter I have experienced in ten years, having to take an icy shower in the morning has seriously been starting to bother me.  During my last winter in Michigan, taking a nice hot bath was one of the only things I could to do feel truly warm.  Therefore, a lack of consistent hot water is a serious problem for me, especially when it is winter!

Really, I do not understand why this is not a problem for the people who reside at these homes and therefore always have to deal with this issue.  If it were my home, I would be getting that handled immediately!  Yet another observation I made is that Turkish people do not shower as often as me.  Again, I realize that I am more extreme in my hygiene, but whatever!  I can’t help it!  I like to be clean!  I need at least a shower a day, if not two and sometimes even three depending on the weather and my day’s activities.  However, when I Couchsurfed for the first two days I was in Istanbul, I could not help but notice that my host wore the same clothes three days in a row and I never noticed him taking a shower.

Yet, I must admit that although I still showered a time or two a day in Istanbul, I don’t think I have ever washed my hair so infrequently.  However, having to wash your hair in ice water is just not a pleasant way to begin a day, and in addition to this, I found that the less I did to look nice before work, the better I was treated.  Literally, it was as if they prefer ugly and dirty!  Just an observation, but it is pretty strange to me.

Another thing that I do not get about the hot water issue, is how do women shave in ice cold water?  Shaving with goosebumps is horrible!  Typically, I am a daily shaver, but in Turkey, that is just not possible since there was rarely enough hot water.  However, since it is necessary to cover up so much, it never really seems to matter.  Really I am seriously DREAMING of a hot shower!

In fact, last week, I was so desperate to have a hot bath that I attempted to fill the bathtub with a combination of what little warm water would come from the tap and some water that I heated on the stove.  While filling the tub in this manner, I felt somewhat like a pioneer and I laughed to myself as I thought how funny it is that as a kid, I used to love those Little House on the Prairie books and here in the year of 2013 I was filling a tub with water boiled on the stove.  Needless to say, after a serious attempt to make it happen, I finally gave up and had just a half bath because it was taking so long to heat the water that it was hardly worth the trouble and the water in the tub was already getting cold in the process!  How interesting are the things that I miss, like a truly hot shower and bath!