The Things We Miss the Most

We left home on April 30 and left the US on May 5 so despite our multiple but too infrequent Skype video calls I have to say we most miss family and friends. We have loved our trip so far and are enchanted with Sevilla. It has replaced some of our other most favorite cities and is now very near the top for charm and beauty. We'll be in Sevilla until July 16 (with some planned side trips to Extremadura, Cordoba, etc.) then will make our way back to the US via military Space-A through the US Navy base in Rota, Spain. We are not sure how long it will take to get home since: 1) we don't have a scheduled flight and 2) we don't know where in the US we will land or how we will get home from there. It's all part of the adventure though I imagine that by mid-July we will be very eager to see family and friends.

After the people that we miss the most the next thing, and pretty high on the list, is our shower. OK, everyone in America who takes their shower for granted stand up...I see a couple people in the back who didn't bother to stand but I believe most of you would agree. We take our showers for granted until...we use someone else's. The ones in the hotels in Virginia and New York weren't too bad. Not like home but not too bad. When we got to Köln, Germany we were in a four star hotel. One would think they would have a pretty snazzy shower. It was pretty, lots of glass, marble and stainless steel, but the shower had no curtain. It had this little glass panel about 18 inches wide that was attached to the wall so that if one stands under the stream, faces away and outstretches one's arms, they extend beyond the glass panel. How the heck is that supposed to keep the water inside the tub or shower stall? The four star hotel in Madrid was a little better. The glass panel was maybe 24 inches wide. Most people in the US have a curtain that covers wall to wall and has those little magnets to keep it in place. We are talking probably a six foot curtain.

The shower in our apartment in Sevilla is better than the one in Köln and better than the one in Madrid but it is a far cry from the one we have at home. The "shower curtain" here is a folding plastic door with two panels and is maybe 36 inches wide. It covers about half the tub. How do we keep the water from splashing out of the tub and getting the whole bathroom wet you ask? Well for one thing the water pressure here is about 14 pounds per square inch vice about 114 at home.

At our home we have a separate shower stall about five by six feet, with it's own glass door that closes it off and makes it a separate room. Right after we get home and greet everyone we haven't seen in a while I am getting in that shower, turning the water on "blast" and showering until we run out of hot water.

Kinda reminds me of when I came home after my first year in Viet Nam, I just stood there for the longest time flushing the toilet over and over and watching the water go down. I believe that after our loved ones it's the simple things in life that we take for granted and miss the most when we don't have them.