the day I broke the shower house

3 July 2012

Back in August when I first moved to town, I learned of a magical place that exists in my town that Mongolians call “hot water.” Basically it’s this place that not only has running water but has HOT running water where people go with soap and shampoo and stand in little individual rooms (an outer changing area and an inner magic area with a curtain in between) and make the amazing transition from gross, nasty, dirty body and hair to sparkly and shiny body and hair. That’s right folks, it’s a shower house and hands-down my favorite place in town.

as seen in the snow-covered world of December

 The major downside to the shower house is that it’s closed on Wednesdays. My soum’s Naadam is on Thursday and I figured I should look reasonably clean for all of the festivities. My plan was to shower the day before but I had an unfortunate reality check when Odgoo looked at me like I was a crazy person and reminded me that Wednesday’s the day before Thursday…duh. So since I’m a horrible Mongolian and am incompetent at bathing myself in a bucket, I made a mad dash to the shower house.

So I’m standing in the shower, doing my thing, and wondering where the hot water is hiding. I twist and twist the knob that usually makes the hot water come out but the water is still lukewarm. And that’s when the fatal mistake happened – my need for hot water led me to twist the knob one turn too far. The knob came off in my hand and suddenly water came shooting out of where the knob used to be. Ever graceful and elegant, I start running around this little space wearing sandals with minimal traction trying to find a way to make the water stop attacking me. I managed to fit the knob back on but trying to screw a knob onto a pipe that is gushing water is a feat that even MacGyver would have found challenging. Eventually I realized that it’s impossible without a wrench or some sort of superpower.

I decided to put some clothes on and go find Bilguun, the girl running the shower house, because I didn’t need the popularity that would have come if I had just gone outside as I was. Unfortunately the knob-geyser was spewing into the changing area and it was a bit like trying to get dressed while standing directly under a waterfall. I escaped Niagara Falls and went hunting for the girl who gave me a very strange look when I couldn’t explain what was wrong and why I was holding some strange object. 

She followed me back into the shower house and my shock when I realized that the whole building had flooded in the two minutes I spent looking for her was outmatched only by the look of bewilderment when she saw the flood and the geyser for the first time. We still were without tools and superpowers so we couldn’t turn off the water or reattach the knob. My language skills have improved but not enough to know the words involved in fixing water pipes. Richard Dean Anderson’s spirit eventually appeared and inspired the solution of tying a rag around the knob and pipe to dam the water. Temporary, but we figured that a lack of flooding was probably an adequate solution until people with more experience fixing things due to a lifetime of dealing with low-quality Chinese products could be found to fix what the silly American broke. And now I know that my ability to break things in spectacular ways is not limited to electronics.