The Taiwan Potty Story

Since I can barely be depended upon to string together enough coherent thoughts to formulate a Facebook status update, I think I'm best serving the blog-reading public right now (all dozen of you) by letting Sheila be the straight-man to my buffoon. By which I mean I don't at all mind looking like an idiot (see previous post) so from me you will probably get the posts about our various foreign blunders. [Let the librarian be the truly informative one; it'll make her feel better about being the only one on the team with a more useless undergraduate degree than mine. (I kid because I love, Sheila)]

To wit: My first night at the Huangs' home (our second night here), I was confused by a toilet for a good 10 minutes.

Background: Did you know you're not really supposed to put toilet paper in the toilet? I arrived at this astute observation (thanks for all the prep, PEOPLE WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO PREP US) by noting that the t.p. kept hanging around post-flush when we were at the hotel, and further noting that every single potty in this country has a wastebasket full of used tissue next to it. Just call me Dr. Watson.

Anyway.

Upon arriving in my private bathroom at the Huangs' (which is in all seriousness the loveliest apartment I've ever seen in my life) I was immediately confronted with the urge to "go" and a new-found sympathy for Luddites. Who's got a keypad attached to the toilet? With instructions in Mandarin, accompanied by the strangest pictographs imaginable? Is there training available, and perhaps grant money?

[And while we're at it, what graphic designer actually conceived of these drawings, and how many meetings did it take to get them approved for use? Best not to think about it too hard.]

Rather than stew over trivialities, I bravely approached this new technology. Further investigation and testing has yielded the following conclusions:

1) I simply MUST own a heated toilet seat IMMEDIATELY upon my arrival back in the States;
2) The pictures matter not at all once you've exhausted all possible combinations of bidet temperature, stream/spray, and strength of flush... you're going to forget which one you liked best anyway;
3) The most important button in the whole process is the one that means STOP.

I could go on and on about how long it took me to realize that the little box of tissues in the lace-frilled cozy are not, in fact, kleenexes, but we should probably let that go due to the fact that I'm the kind of mom where, if you ask my kid for a tissue, she'll bring you three or four squares of t.p. anyway.

Ain't world travel glamorous, folks? You're never going to forget I talked about this, are you? My only consolation is that my post immediately before this should probably have given you fair warning about what a countrified bumpkin I am, so the Taiwan Potty Story should come as no surprise.