Ugh. No hot water, no time for breakfast. That's how the morning began.
My already cold hands (it's about 35 degrees in the house in the mornings) got ice cold from washing my face in cold water. I fiddled with my water heater display box for a bit but no luck. No hot water. Fiddling took up more time than I realized and so I was rushing out the door, leaving my bowl of cereal milkless and uneaten.
Bad start.
On the ride to school I prayed that when I got home the hot water would work.
My principle let me out early. This week we have parent-teacher conferences 4th-6th period. That's right. That means I'm sitting at my desk, no classes to teach, from 4th-6th period. He saw me still at my desk at 4:00pm and told me to go home. "Dozo, dozo" he said, "Go ahead."
On the ride home a thought flashed through my mind that maybe it was good fortune to get off early in case my hot water still didn't work...
...I was right. I tried several more times, at several faucets but no hot water. I am prone to tears, it doesn't take much to get me welled up. So, invariably, I had a little sit down at my kitchen table and cried from frustration and more than a little bit of self-pity.
My supervisor is a home room teacher so she was still in meetings at 4:30pm, when I was ready to stop crying and, ya know, do something. I called another English teacher, the only one without a home room, and she was on it in no time.
She decided it was probably a gas problem (I have a gas stove and apparently that's what heats my water too). She called the gas company and they came to my house by 5:00pm. Hot water was running through my faucets by 5:15pm.
And that's when I realized the blessing of no hot water. In America, this would be just a brief annoyance. An inconvenience but not instructional in any way. I'd call the gas company myself, get things sorted out, and go about my day angry at the waste of time.
In Japan, this incident became another way to see my many blessings. I'm not alone here. No, I can't call the gas company myself and no, I still don't know what went wrong or how to prevent it from happening again. I do, however, have great coworkers who will help me with any problem, at any time (I called this same coworker at 7:00am on Saturday when I woke up to the fat lip I had this summer). They help without fanfare and without making me feel silly or like a burden.
Don't get me wrong, I look forward to eating breakfast tomorrow and washing my face with hot water. I am aware, though, that some things are more important than physical comforts.
Things like counting my blessings.
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