everyday things...hayk

Have we ever told you that we can't flush the toilet paper down the toilet here? We have to put it in the trashcan. That was a fun habit to change...and we have a smelly can of toilet paper in our bathroom now.
OR
Have we told you our stove/oven and our heaters run on gas tanks, and we currently have one full and three empties? The only way to get new tanks is to listen for the ice cream truck song (which is really the gas tank truck song) and run out and catch the truck...that hasn't happened for us yet because we live on the second floor and can't get out there in time. So, soon we need to take an entire afternoon and go sit on the sidewalk and just wait. We can't figure out how everyone else gets this accomplished...
OR
Have we told you that we have to go down to the "water store" to get a big Hinkley type water jug that has drinkable water in it? It costs 85 piestres which is approx. $1.25 US and it lasts us about a week. The only glitch with that is that if it stays in the big jug too long, it will smell and taste bad! So, we've figured out a system. We bring the jug home and immediately put it on it's tiny base, then we fill up about 14 - 1.5 liter bottles and make a liter of Tang and fill our fridge. Exciting right?
OR
Have we told you about the water tank on our roof? We get water once a week. Therefore we have to be careful to ration out our water correctly...or we are stuck without water until it comes the next Tuesday! Obviously that means we can only do laundry once a week, and sometimes we have to leave things out of the wash that aren't as important. We ran out of water once, but thankfully it was a Monday night...the night before water day. The nice thing is that if we plan correctly we can do our laundry while the water tank is filling up, and than we aren't losing any water for the rest of the week...because the tank fills until it is full.
(On the note of laundry, it takes our washing machine about an hour and a half to do one load of laundry...then we take all of the clothes up to the roof, and hang dry them all. They usually dry within about 30 minutes and are really too crisp!)
OR
Have we told you that we have 1 mini water heater and it is solely for the shower. We have to turn it on at least 20-30 minutes before we desire to take a shower. If I decide I want to take a long shower, well, sorry Jeff. You just can't take one today. We need to save water anyway.
AND
This may sound gross to you, but I haven't tackled mopping yet. I've swept the floors in our apartment many times, but haven't mopped. Only because I haven't been brave enough to try it out. It involves a squeegee on a long handle....and you're supposed to pour your cleaning water on the floor, wrap a towel around the squeegee and mop the water into the drain on the floor. Sounds messy and complicated to me...

we have a word that we use around here: hayk. it means, "that's just the way it is."

and so...hayk