Water, water everywhere

17 days into my adventure. I've adjusted fairly well, I think. Except for the water. 
For a city surrounded by water, it's hard to come by. I don't mean it's scarce, or that you can't buy it. I'm talking about the fact that you have to buy it. Since he tap water is dirty you have to buy the water purified.

 Dirty tap water

When I first realized that I had to buy my water, I flipped. As an American, it would be expensive to always buy bottled water. Luckily here it's cheap. Yesterday I bought a (couple of) 1.5L bottle of water. It cost me 40 kuruş - that's .4 TL (our equivalent to cents). In USD that's .25.  So it's not too bad. The price also goes down when you buy more water. 

 

I've stopped buying the small ones! The bigger the better

In the States, I drink at least 5L of water a day. I normally carry a water bottle around with me and just refill it as needed. There are places to refill water bottles, but it's different. There aren't drinking fountains. The places to refill water are what we consider to be "Culligan water".

 The "Culligan water" thing at the dorm

There's several of these in my office building, and there's one in the office of my dorm. I've contemplated whether or not to ask the dorm directors if they could put one of those in my room. I'm guessing they wouldn't know how to respond to such a request. When I say that I drink a lot water, people look at me funny and ask why. Sure I drink tea, coffee, orange juice, LEMONADE!, etc. I just like my water. It fixes everything.  It comforts you when you're sad (you need to replenish the water that you cried out), it's a non-alcoholic celebratory drink (nothing like an ice cold glass of water to keep your body numb of happiness), it cures illnesses, AND you can swim in it! I suppose you can swim in a pool of coffee, but who would want to?

Not only do you have to buy water, but you have to plan on how you're going to use it. One of the internship coordinators, Hande, explained to me that she orders a certain amount of water for 1 week and uses it for everything - cooking, washing, cleaning, etc I only want to drink it. Sometimes I feel like I have to ration my water because otherwise I will run out and have to refill late at night or be without. The worst is waking up realizing I've forgotten to refill the night before!

It was a rainy day in Istanbul today. Thus I spent my day inside staring at the water falling from the sky, wishing i could set out my water bottles for them to fill up. Then I took a nap, and I awoke to empty water containers.

ARRRRGGGG!!!! Angry storm clouds!!!!!