Today was just a normal work day, so it’s time to give you a little insight into our daily routine concerning body hygiene.
At the end of each day we take a shower, but it is a bit different compared to Germany. First of all we do not have a shower in our room. That means, if you want to take a shower, you will have to walk across the yard to another building. So at the end of our first day here, we had an appointment with Zhu & Li who wanted to show us the showers. When we met, there were also 4 other students with them, who were introduced as „school mates“. So we went to the shower building in the ground floor, first floor is for the girls. Inside the building are just some lockers and a big room with two walls in the middle. At each wall there are about ten shower heads with a small device beside them. So we all undress, take our shampoo and most important the card we also use for the food at the school with us. To start showering, you have to place the card on the device beside the shower, then water will run. The price is about 0.5 Yuan per minute (that’s very cheap).
The shower was very good and warm, but it was a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling. Just imagine the situation: Thinking of a shower in Germany, you imagine a room for yourself and some privacy. That there would be no private showers we already thought of, but doing our first shower together with two guys we knew for about eight hours and four guys we knew for five minutes was a little bit unfamiliar…
The next days were better, there were mostly no other or only a few students showering together with us, and besides that you get used to it. But you have to keep the shower times in mind. During the week hot water is available between 5 and 9.30 pm and on the weekend only between 7 and 9 pm. We also experienced the water being turned off earlier then these times, luckily for us we had just finished, some Chinese students beside us had just applied shampoo… So don’t miss the times!
Tomorrow at work we will book the tickets for the train ride to Shanghai. We are looking forward to it 🙂
Alex and Lukas