Found: Hot water and a coffeemaker!

So, the first day I arrived at Nagi's house, the first thing I wanted to do was take a shower. It's funny how a person hardly moves or sweats or does anything at all on a 13 hour plane ride, yet can feel so smelly and gross afterwards. When |I arrived, Jad warned me that this was a "house of men," (i.e. messy), but it really isn't so bad. I've lived with men who were much much worse. His bathroom is quite an experience -- picture a stand-up shower with no curtain or other barrier. It is clean, though a bit run down. Without a barrier, the water from the shower naturally goes all over the place, but they have this cool floor squeegee to clean up afterwards. What a way to keep the floors clean! Quite brilliant actually. Anyway. I went in and found only one handle for water, so I turned it up as high as it could go. Cold water. Cold cold water. Not a big deal, but still. Cold water. Forceful pressure, but cold water.

Somehow, the next day, two showers later, I decided not to turn the faucet all the way up. Less pressure, less splashing all over the floor, less water all over my hanging towel. And what do you know....HOT WATER!!! Now I get it. The single handle provides hot water at first, then gets colder the more you turn it. Ah..... hot showers.

Last night, we moved over to Nagi's sisters house, where we'll stay for one week. She is out of town and her place has a bit more room than Nagi's, so we are taking advantage of the opportunity while it's here. One great thing about hanging out with these athletes is the abundance of healthy food and drink. These Brazilians drink more juice than a hungry baby orange can slurp from its mama orange's teat (sorry -- bad analogy... I tried. I failed...What else drinks a lot of juice?). The downside is that many of them don't drink coffee. (Don't drink coffee? Blasphemy!!!!!!) This morning I woke up to find such a great surpise at Nagi's sister's place. Coffee AND a coffeemaker! And milk! And sugar!! Oh sweet gifts of the lord and supermercado. I actually took a picture of it. (But haven't had time to upload pictures yet, so you'll all just have to imagine what the lovely coffeemaker looks like. It is black and sleek and makes one perfect cup of strong yummy cafe.)

It's the little things in life that make the difference...