TGIF

I have been doing absolutely nothing today. I was just on reddit and I came across a thread that had a gallery of the world's toilets. It reminded me of when I was a Freshman in college and one of my roommates was from Jordan. Well, when I say roommate I mean suite-mate because we all had our own rooms that were connected by a hallway with two sinks and a bathroom. So all we shared was the communal area. Anyways, back to the story. Let's call my old roommate "Sarah" to keep her identity safe. Within the first few weeks of moving in, my other roommates and I started realizing that the bathroom began to smell. Like, really bad. We couldn't really figure out what would smell so bad, the college had a cleaner come weekly to clean the bathroom, so it really shouldn't smell. Then, a few days later, one of my roommates who was from Southern California (the other from Hawaii) pulled me aside. She had figured out why the bathroom stunk. It turns out that Sarah had been putting her used toilet paper in the small bathroom trash (I mean small-like, the size of a box of crayons). My other roommates, Southern California and Hawaii, couldn't figure out why she would do that, but I connected the dots. The sewage system where she's from most likely could not handle toilet paper in the drains, so she was putting her used toilet paper in our bathroom trash. My other two roommates asked that I spoke to Sarah about this. It was awkward, but it had to be done. Sarah had no idea that it was totally normal in our culture to flush toilet paper down the loo. I told her that if she could now flush her toilet paper down the toilet instead of stuffing it in the trash, all would be hunky-dory. I wonder, do British people know the meaning of the phrase "hunky-dory?" I love cultural differences! What's another American saying, or something I believe originates in America. Ooh! How about the phrase "close, but no cigar?" I feel that phrase is mostly said by an older generation in general.

This is the third episode of The Big Bang Theory that I've watched today, previously I watched the fantastic musical film The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews is so beautiful. She is so terrific in that film. It was a nice refreshing change to watch a film that had zero violence in it for once. Of course the nazis come in by the end of the film, but no actual violence is had. Compared to the film I watched last night, The Dark Knight, The Sound of Music was a nice breath of fresh air.

I've never seen the film Big Fish by Tim Burton, but I think that's the film I'll be watching tonight with Ollie. If I wasn't a film student I would feel kind of lazy watching film after film, but it's so relaxing and I love the escapism aspect of films. I just sit on the couch and I feel like the main character in the film and like everything happening in the plot is actually happening to me. Then you have to consider one thing, do films hinder one's imagination because the film narrative is shaping what we imagine? Or does the film help us to imagine further? There's technically no wrong answer, so consider away! Personally my belief is that books leave the most to imagination. For example, when reading the Harry Potter books I pictured Harry, Hermione and Ron a bit differently, but that is because my imagination took me somewhere different than that of the casting director. However, for people that did not read the books have their imagination limited due to the unnecessary need to imagine something that's in front of you: Dan Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are what Harry, Hermione and Ron look like.

Enough film student talk, today was a big day for my family. As some of you may already know, in November, one of my sisters Brianne was elected councilwoman of Ward 1 in Washington, D.C, which is the capital of the United States. Today, Brianne was officially sworn into office. It was on TV, and I'll provide an image. I also posted this same image on my Facebook page for this blog, which is here. I created the Facebook page to try and reach a bigger audience of readers. We shall see! Anyways, my mom was even right there in D.C. to support my sister and I'm so proud of her. If you're interested in checking out what my sister does, her website is BrianneForDC.com and it's pretty cool. Ooh I just thought of something! Brianne will most likely have a Wikipedia page in the near future! What an honor. I can brag and say I have a sister that has a Wikipedia page. Anyways, my point is that I'm really proud of my sister because she's always been so driven and career minded and it clearly has paid off. It must feel so good to have the career that she worked hard for. She is an awesome human being and I'm so very lucky to have her in my life.

So I haven't spoken of this publically-only to my friends and family, but the "shower situation" in my flat is kind of unconventional. So when we moved in, it was a tub with a hose connected to a shower head. A makeshift shower, if you will. Basically one hand holds the shower head and the other cleans your body. Why not just put the shower head on the wall, Leah? Then it'll be almost like a real shower! Well, we have a shower head holder attached to the wall, but it's on the side of the bathtub. Also, the reason we can't have an actual shower head that is normal installed is because the ceilings on our second floor are cottage style, so they're quite low in certain places. The original shower head broke 3 months ago and the hose wasn't a normal size. We bought a showerhead to replace the original but it wasn't the right size. Eventually we gave in and we started using a straight up shower hose to bathe. One hand holding the hose, another hand doing the soaping. Well today, the real estate had an engineer come by and install a new shower head. It works great, but its' still annoying that it's on the side of the bath and in its holder it only can spray half of my body at a time.

Ah, another big difference in the UK and in the US is the bathroom faucet(s), or as they call them here, the taps. Right, so here almost always there are two different faucets, one is cold one is hot. There aren't sinks here that are climate controlled, meaning you turn on the hot and cold at one time and the temperature of the water is a variant of the two-not too warm and not too cold, depending how much you turn the taps. However, since each faucet is different and one does hot water and the other cold, when I wash my hands it's either burning hot or ice cold. This is probably the most frustrating thing in the world. Can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night, cold because there's no central heating in your apartment (my first experience living without heating) and you sit down on the cold toilet at 4 AM and then you have to wash your hands in ice cold water because burning your hands is out of the question.

I've just realized that the overall theme of my blog today seems to be the bathroom. Oh well, no shame here. Have a good night

Thanks for tuning in,
Leah