The Little (And Not So Little) Things

I've been back at Sias now for a little over a week, and overall life has moved along as I expected. Shops have started opening again. Students have been returning. And even the weather has been getting warmer. Teachers have returned and work has resumed, albeit slowly and perhaps a little bit grudgingly. It's hard to come back to winter when you've been in summer and sunshine for 6 weeks.

I found a couple surprises coming back to my apartment including a wooden fan that some small insect feasted on, a plant that is almost dead, and a kombucha culture that is dead. Fortunately, the fan is still intact, the plant may recover, and my friend is also brewing kombucha, so I can get another culture.

Internet speed is something I've resolved will always be an issue. Though someone announced that the bandwidth is supposed to be increasing in the near future, I am somewhat cynical - I will believe it when I am streaming Hulu videos with more than a few pauses. Today I battled the copier at the front desk, but that isn't surprising; the copier usually rebels in some way if you try to make more than 20 copies at one time, especially if you want it to print double sided. But I did finally get my 140 double sided pages printed even if it took 45 minutes.

Perhaps the biggest trial the residents of Peter Hall will deal with this week is the lack of hot water. The engineers here changed the location of the boiler from the nearest boiler on the east side of the campus to another one on the west side. And, according to another teacher who seems knowledgeable on such matters, the people who set up the system don't know how to flush a line. And so the line is cold, essentially, when the hot water turns on, and it takes a very long time for it to ever get warm. This morning the water coming out of my shower was slightly warmer than the air, which right now flows around 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I've been told that it should get warmer when more students are here using it... The thought of sharing hot water with the entire population of west campus does not evoke much confidence in this new system. (We have 25,000 people on campus.) And I wonder if our hot water hours have been changed to match the time students get hot water. Before yesterday, we could expect hot water from 6:00AM-9:00AM and 6:00PM-11:00PM. Students get hot water until 8:00AM in the morning and 10:00PM at night.

I am thankful, regardless of these issues, to be working again and spending time with people I've missed during the holiday. And even if the hot water issue isn't resolved soon, I have friends with hot water heaters and, beyond this, I have a hot plate and a big pot, and I can take a bucket shower.