I almost made it the entire year without taking THE PUBLIC SHOWER....

Hi All!!!!!!

Happy June and Happy Father's Day! I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the end of the school year (for all of you in school) and the arrival of summer!! I am in disbelief over how fast this past year has flown bye. It is definitely bittersweet! I have two weeks of work left and I'm starting to go through all of my stuff and am getting organized so I can start packing, WHAT! It's amazing.

I am going to try to write a few more entires before the end of the year because there is so much I still want to add to my blog before I leave. But for now, I have one of the most hilarious moments of China to share with you. It truly left me well....speechless and naked. hahaha

Please enjoy! I miss you all!

Lots of love,
Sheila.


I have seen really strange and bizarre things in China over the past nine months...but I can officially top them all with one unforgettable afternoon. A few weekends ago, I went away to Shenyang (a city four hours Southeast of Tongliao) with Ian, Mike and Anthony. We wanted a little Western loving, and when I say this, I mean the guys went to McDonalds and I enjoyed the quiet solitude of Starbucks!

After a four hour bus ride, an hour of watching the boys disgustingly wolf down McDonald's and a little hectic shopping in another overcrowded Chinese city, I decided it was time for a nice, long, HOT, shower in our hostel.

But to my great surprise, our hostel was an absolute mess. We shared a four person room with community bathrooms. As I approached the women's shower, a hostel employee informed me that the shower was broken and directed me down a back staircase to the back of the hostel. When I reached the bottom floor, I found a back entrance to a separate facility. At the sight of what lay before me, I burst into a fit of laughter. I had somehow avoided the "Public Bathhouse" over the past nine months, and with only three months to go, this experience wasn't going to escape me. So, I took a deep breath, smiled at the Bathhouse employees who were now laughing and pointing at me and I walked through the curtains.

I entered a small changing room where I was assigned a locker and a lock. No problem! "This isn't so bad!" I thought to myself. The one thing I have avoided like the plague allllll year, is not that big of a deal! I grabbed my stuff and looked around the room to see what the next step was! But then I noticed THE DOOR. As it opened, I had a quick glimpse of why I have avoided this situation. I walked through the door into the shower room. It was a huge room with shower heads on all four walls. I stepped through the doorway and frantically searched for a free shower head. After putting my things down, I then searched for the button to turn the water on without success. I had no idea what to do! At this point, I felt an audience forming, so I looked at the woman to my left, who smiled and pointed to the sensor on the wall. All I had to do was stand under the shower head and the water would begin. After figuring this minor detail out, I decided to look back at the woman and give her a thankful nod, but as I looked to her, her eyes were still on me, but not at my eyes.

After relaxing a bit, I took a quick glance at the room to really see if I was actually doing this. There must have been 40 women in the room and I would say about 3/4's of them were looking at....yours truly. I felt like the Declaration of Independence in Washington D.C. or Britney Spears in the middle of an airport. I was the most popular thing to look at, I was the show.

I began to notice that I was doing something wrong. Here I am, minding my own business, showering face to the wall. My fellow shower friends were all facing towards the center of the room. I decided, hey I'm being very Chinese today, let's continue. So I bit the bullet and turned to face the center of the room when I saw a sight that almost made me fall to the floor.(Thank God I didn't, that would be even more disgusting than my hostel). I actually think I stepped outside my sensor in shock without even knowing my water stopped. In front of me was THE MOST INTERESTING SIGHT I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY 23 YEARS OF LIFE. At the very center of the room, I found the real show.

In the middle of the room were two twin-sized beds (minus the sheets and pillows...it was more like a board). And on top of the beds were two naked, FAT, Chinese women. Now they weren't just lying there, but they were being washed. Yes, I said BEING WASHED. Beside the beds were two more naked women, washing the two women who were lying on the beds. And when I say washing, imagine going to your favorite car wash that never misses a spot. These women were cleaning every possible area you could think of (better yet, don't picture it). No wonder these women were so out of shape, this is the epitome of lazy...they can't even wash themselves!

Overall, I had a brilliantly hot shower. (I am definitely not going to miss my cold showers when I leave China). I know I just spent an entire blog on my shower, but this story is one I will never, ever forget, even though I wish I could!