Water Update

An update on the water issue:

I just got back from work and everything's working (I was praying and saying positive things like "It WILL be working" on the entire walk back from work). Sink is fine, shower is fine, toilet is flush-able (Thank God, because the odors were starting to get to me, and it looks like I'll be doing an overdue load of laundry tonight.

I asked my director about my water situation today and he gave me a quick answer: talk to your landlady. I spent my free time today thinking about all the Korean I will need to say in order to speak to her: pipes, cold, freeze, kitchen, toilet, shower, days of the week, repairman, phone number....the list could go on forever. On a side note, I realized just how useless my Introduction to Korean Language book is! It's supposed to provide me with a beginner's introduction to the Korean language, but I've learned it's useless to know how to say "The mouse is under the refrigerator". What should I be learning? Numbers, colors, months, days, how to say the date, how to say how I feel, etc.

Anyway, I started each of my advanced classes today describing my home situation and asked if anyone had similar problems at their homes. Many students had no water yesterday and a couple still have no water. I felt better knowing this was a common problem with Korean families over the past few days. And I should count myself lucky. One student told me that a pipe burst! No flooding, fortunately, and all will be repaired this weekend.

I was curious about my own pipe situation last night. There is no access to the pipes inside the house (or any electrical boxes - not that I would know how any of that works anyway). But there is a creepy metal door that leads out from my bathroom into a sort of courtyard. After five months, I decided to explore this door last night and see if it would give me clues toward solving my water problem.

The door does indeed lead out into a kind of courtyard, certainly not the kind you where you would want to sunbathe. It's pretty narrow and there's a ragged tarp serving as a roof, lots of high walls, in short, a great place to get murdered (in fact, this courtyard/alley has served as the stage for all the cat fights I've heard outside my bedroom window for the past five months!) Attached to the wall are dozens of pipes and tubes going into and out of the wall. As far as I could tell, nothing looked frozen, but then the water inside the pipes could be frozen, as all the pipes are fully exposed to the outside elements. I went back inside after my mini adventure, none the wiser.

Ex-pats have let out their grief on ESL message boards all over the place, most notably Dave's ESL Cafe. I keep seeing the same rumor again and again - Korean's don't insulate their pipes for winter. I agree with most of the posts - Korean buildings aren't built for winter (my classroom certainly attests to that statement!). Again, these winters aren't exactly the Nor'Easters I get in upstate New York; it rarely snows here! And while it rarely gets below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, temperatures below freezing are not unusual.

So all quiet on the eastern front right now. I'll remember to leave a trickle of water in the sink every night until winter ends. I still haven't found the reason for this weekend's madness, but my hunch is that the water companies turned the water off to keep families' pipes from freezing. That explains why this water problem has affected so many people.

Goodness, I was so eager for the oppressive summer heat and humidity to end, and here I am wishing an end to winter, Ha!