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Friday, October 15, 2010

"That's some high quality H2O"

How can something that brings such joy bring such pain and suffering too? First, the bad news, (I like the bad news first so the good news can linger because you know, “love lingers”) anyway, Several months after we arrived in AS we were having a conversation with a local friend in which he turned to us and asked, “so your boiling your water right”…
“ah, no, are we suppose to?”
Apparently everyone knew that you are suppose to boil your water before use. Everyone except the polongies who have never had to perform such a task as a necessity. (I don’t know if spoiled or blessed would be the right upu…um…word) So, we started buying bottled water and we immediately started feeling better. The physical symptoms that we thought were part of adjusting to a somewhat new diet, subsided. We thought we were home free.
Unfortunately, the water that is bottled off island and shipped in is no longer available. We started buying the local filtered water…the jury is still out on this one. After several kids have been from school sick with fevers, diarrhea, and vomiting because of the water, one teacher informed me that we aren’t suppose to use the water even for washing dishes.
One rainy Sunday afternoon matthew and I were so thirsty and had just ran out of our last bottle of water. “What are we going to do? I’m so thirsty!”
“Well duh, lets get some rain water. What do you think people did for thousands of years?”
So we put all our pans….all 2 of them, out on our car and caught about a gallon of some of the best tasting water we’ve had since we’ve been here! So we are hoping to use rain water for everything now, showering, cooking, cleaning, ect.. (side note: it is now our summer which means less rain. Since we have to wait till it rains to shower you can probably already smell us from the mainland)

As for the good news, we were led to this amazing cove by some great new friends the DaBells. They are AMAZING! and they brought us to this AMAZING beach. We felt rejuvenated, revitalized, and recharged as we climbed down in. It lifted our spirits and as we stepped into the water we couldn’t help but smile to once again have our feet in soft sand and the waves swirling around us, engulfing us in good juju. There are some things that are difficult about living on an island, especially here in AS. But then there is so much that makes up for it and makes life oh so good.