Nooooo!!!

My little heating coil stopped working!!! I realize that the ability to boil water might not seem like a big deal, but the only time we really go out to eat is lunch, therefore that’s my one substantive meal. The food at the hotel is both expensive and mediocre (it's okay to be one or the other - but not both), so the bazillion packets of soup and oatmeal that I have with me are my dinners. And the occasional snack. They don’t, however, work with cold water, and using hot tap water would be asking for another bout of dysentery, and once was enough. Therefore, the fact of my now-defunct heating coil is just…tragic. (Yes, I’m being a little melodramatic. But I’m still very, very bummed out. I’m also a little hacked that it really only worked for a week.) Although this is (allegedly) a five-star hotel, they don’t have any tea or coffee-making stuff in the room, so I have nothing else to use. I’m experimenting with alternate ways to make clean water hot enough to reconstitute my soup and oatmeal – especially since I know there’s an 11-pound box chock full o’ more soup and oatmeal winging its way toward me. The best alternative I have so far? Running scalding water in the bathtub and placing a plastic bottle of water in it, letting the scalding water heat up the clean water in the bottle. It never really gets *hot*, but it gets warm enough – although I haven’t tried to reconstitute any soups with noodles yet. I may need to see if room service will bring me a pot of boiling water – I wonder what they’ll charge for that? Here’s hoping they don’t use tap water.

Between heating water for soup and washing all of my clothes by hand in that same bathtub (with the scalding water), my hands are red, raw, and otherwise completely destroyed today. That’s okay, though – not like a lot of people everywhere, including here, don’t have to do this every day. I’m just used to…well, not having to do this every day.