Bathrooms, Wishes and Dreams Come True

One of the things that is pretty different here (and not in a good way) is the bathrooms. Our bathroom in Eagles Wings 2 where we lived last time had a hand held shower head on the wall...in the middle of the room. The water drained to a hole in the floor behind the toilet. The bathroom itself was not too small (in fact bigger than our bathrooms now), but the layout meant that when you took a shower you stood nekkid in the middle of the room and most everything got wet, particularly if you were not too careful where you pointed the shower head. One of our Eagles Wings homes has a bathtub for our more seriously disabled children, but it's a luxury.

When Marissa, Lindsay, Kristen and I were discussing our return to China, we talked about the things they would miss, what they wanted to take with them and what they wished for to make our life here more like home. So it wasn't too much of a surprise when Marissa's wish was for a bathtub. We knew that Eagles Wings 1 where we live now didn't have one. (At least not until today!!)

While we were getting ready to leave Florida, I posted a few “Chip Ins” here on the blog to raise support for our expenses (I am not paid by Eagles Wings, we are supported by donations designated specifically for us). One of those Chip Ins was a modest one ($300) to pay for a bathtub. It was amazing (and funny) how quickly that money was raised! Chip Ins for food and school supplies, necessities from my point of view, were not nearly as enthusiastically supported as that bathtub fund!

When we arrived in China, I had the bathtub funds transferred to us here, and I have kept them in an envelope marked “Bathtub”, not to be spent on anything else. (Certainly nothing as foolish as food or printer paper for school lessons! lol) Marissa and I spent a couple of weekends looking at the options and formulating our priorities. One major constraint was space. A standard tub here appears to be 1.5 meters. Our current shower space would only accommodate 1.4. This significantly limited our options. We were initially enamored with a fairly luxury model (that came in a 1.4 size) with all the faucets and hand held shower nozzle built into the tub. It even had a little headrest for soaking. Sweet. But then I thought about the shower issue. Being Americans we like having a shower head on the wall, not just the handheld. The luxury tub wouldn't let us hang the hand held on the wall to stand under. Hmmm.

We did some more looking, this time at bath fixtures (shower heads, hand helds, spouts) and decided to go for a very basic bathtub and add a nice new set of fixtures that would give us a real showerhead, plus adjustable hand held and a spout to fill the tub. All for just a little less than the $300 we raised – including delivery and installation.

So dreams do come true. Best of all we picked everything out yesterday and it was installed today (Sunday). Marissa (of course) took the first bath and shower. Now Kristen is taking a nice long soak, with Mermaid Barbie, of course. ;) What do our Chinese kids think? The girls think it looks pretty cool; I am guessing they will be taking showers or baths tonight. The boy said it was “okay” but wasn't looking so happy. I had a suspicion he thought that baths would have to be substituted for showers. Once I showed him the nifty new shower head options, he seemed a lot happier.

Complete with shower curtain,
which we also added when we arrived.

 Thanks everyone who donated to the bathtub...I can assure you your donation was spent as promised and is VERY much appreciated!