Today we walked to Ramstore, a grocery store that has Parmesan cheese!, and from there took the bus to church. On the bus, we surprised Christie and several others who had caught it several bus stops earlier. When we arrived, we were happy to see that we were early, for once! I didn't have any groceries that required being kept cool, but the church is cold enough for refrigerator items.
However, we did need to use the restroom. This is a small, new church, serving a tiny minority of Catholics in Astana. Would it have a bathroom? We looked around the inside of the church and didn't see anything, other than the room for perpetual adoration, and a closed wooden door with no sign. I wasn't about to go peeping in strange doors.
We went outside and I saw that the church was much bigger than I had thought. It is connected to two other buildings--the convent perhaps? And it has a downstairs. Wandering around the church, we could look inside the windows to the basement. And there we saw a lit hallway and signs for toilets! We hurried back inside--they were behind the wooden door I had not tried.
We could not find the stairwell lights and so made our way down in darkness. The downstairs was quite large, hallways leading somewhere, but we didn't explore. We just used the toilet.
There was a sign above the toilet in Russian. It seemed to be saying something about toilet paper. At the American library's bathroom, there was a sign, in Russian and English, saying "Do not put ANY paper in the toilet." I was confused--does this include toilet paper? Here, I was wondering the same thing. A look in the trash can ("rubbish bin," I'm learning it is called) informed me that some people had definitely thrown away toilet paper. Maybe.
The toilet seat lid was off the toilet. I noticed that under the sink there was a faucet with a bucket under it. What was this for? I wondered.
Then either Sophia or I forgot to throw away the toilet paper, instead putting it in the toilet. This was when I realized that the flush was broken.
Luckily, my previous experience with a non-working flush had prepared me for this moment. I now knew what the strange low-lying faucet and bucket were for. I filled the bucket and then poured water down the toilet bowl. It worked.
I've never had to give so much thought to toilets in my life.
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