Ulpan is in a building similar to a school building with classrooms that seat abound 30 people. There are probably a 100 or more students and we all get a break at the same time. There is one men's room and one ladies' room. The woman's restroom has three stalls, but one of the toilets doesn't have a toilet seat. In my mind, the logical thing to do is to not use that stall. But women will use that stall, and I have no idea how they do that. I have actually seen women select that stall -- the one without a toilet seat -- even when the other ones are empty. More puzzling is I have seen women exit a stall with a toilet seat and the seat is up.
I am a spoiled American, and I need a seat on the toilet. And I must always under all circumstances use toilet paper. Many of the fellow students don't seem to care if there's toilet paper or not. I bring my own toilet paper from home, just in case. What's more, there is no soap in the restroom and only rarely paper towels. These women don't seem to care about that either, they just don't bother washing their hands afterwards. Although, when there's no soap or towels and the best you can do is dip your fingers in cold water and let them air-dry, they do have a point.
Get this, one day in our search for Thai food, we went to an upscale Pan-Asian restaurant. It had Pad Se Eu with tofu but it wasn't up to the quality found at Tommy's in Denver, or that place in Bellingham, Washington. Anyway, the restroom there had three cubicles with toilets and no indication of which sex should use what. It appeared male or female could just use an empty stall. Luckily the tiny cubicles had just been cleaned, but ick. The cubicle had a real door so no one could peek in, but right outside a man and woman started talking, and I was like: This just isn't going to happen.
I am a spoiled American, and I need a seat on the toilet. And I must always under all circumstances use toilet paper. Many of the fellow students don't seem to care if there's toilet paper or not. I bring my own toilet paper from home, just in case. What's more, there is no soap in the restroom and only rarely paper towels. These women don't seem to care about that either, they just don't bother washing their hands afterwards. Although, when there's no soap or towels and the best you can do is dip your fingers in cold water and let them air-dry, they do have a point.
Get this, one day in our search for Thai food, we went to an upscale Pan-Asian restaurant. It had Pad Se Eu with tofu but it wasn't up to the quality found at Tommy's in Denver, or that place in Bellingham, Washington. Anyway, the restroom there had three cubicles with toilets and no indication of which sex should use what. It appeared male or female could just use an empty stall. Luckily the tiny cubicles had just been cleaned, but ick. The cubicle had a real door so no one could peek in, but right outside a man and woman started talking, and I was like: This just isn't going to happen.
A long time ago I was in a writer's group. For fun, we were talking about writing a novel together combining our favorite genre's: there was a sci-fi writer, a romance writer, a mystery writer, a drama writer. Well, wanna-be writers. So we came up with this plot that would incorporate all of these elements in a book, part of the story involved a romance on a Star-Trek like spaceship. One woman, perhaps the mystery writer, asked how would you use the restroom on a spaceship? (Which goes to prove, I'm not the only one who obsesses about this subject). We looked at the sci-fi writer for an explanation and she couldn't give one. Then one woman joked that in romance fiction a white dove comes and magically takes it away.
US restrooms in a school would be similar to what's at Ulpan, except I'm pretty sure they would provide soap dispensers and some kind of method to dry your hands. A restroom in an upscale restaurant would have a men's room and a women's room nicely separated. I've been in public restrooms in the United States that are grander than most people's homes complete with a lounge furnished with comfortable chairs, flowers, and wall to ceiling mirrors. These restrooms have large, comfortable, private cubicles where you can hang up your coat and place your purse somewhere other than the floor. If necessary, you can put a toilet seat cover over the already clean seat, and when you stand it flushes all by itself. Maybe a dove doesn't magically take it away, but in the US it comes pretty damn close.
Before David and I left California, we wondered what would be some of the things we'd miss the most about America. David likes his steak and he had concerns about that. I like my movies and Netflix and thought going without TV entertainment would be a killer. We've been too busy to miss Netflix. It never, ever occurred to me I would miss US public restrooms.
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