While living in foreign country you might periodically ask yourself: What is this thing?

What is this thing?!

You eyes search around for a purpose.

I can‘t see what this is for?!

You try and fiddle around with it.

Try and turn it on! Is this right?

I just found this on the bottom of one of my walls, very close to the floor, and just outside my bathroom.

When I turn it on, the green light goes on but nothing happens. So, I guess I will just keep it off. Thank goodness for the internet. It turns out it is some sort of thermostat. I am still not for sure if I will use it though. For sure people don’t typically have these things on the walls (near the floor) in homes in the United States.

While living in another country, this was what my washing machine looked like; the Little Swan. Not knowing how to read Chinese characters, I for sure had no clue what kind of functions this machine had or could do. I guess you just take a guess and try to get it started some how and hope that you can get someone into your home to show you how to use it!

The joys of living in a house or an apartment in a different country! Many international school teachers have worked in more than one country and in each country there are definitely going to be these “things” that just don’t look right, that we can’t figure out or that we can’t (initially) understand the purpose of.

International School Community would like to highlight a few parts of this blogger’s entry (living in Jordan) who had a similar experience with a ‘thing’ in her bathroom:

“This a picture of something on the floor in the bathroom, the kitchen, and the laundry room. What do these rooms have in common? What is it?

Answer: Okay, you are super smart. It’s a drain. But on the floor? Why?

Part II: What is this?

Answer: No duh, it’s a squeegee, right. Is it for windows? No! What is the relationship between the drains and the squeegee?

Put it all together and what do you get? It’s actually quite ingenious. The drain I’ll grant you is disgusting looking. When I opened it the first time, I shuddered. I’d clean it out, but we have a ‘house cleaner’ who does that (and no, I’m not trying to sound obnoxious. I’ve never had a house cleaner because we could never afford one, but here it’s so cheap, i.e. see pedicure blog, that we can’t afford not to have someone clean the house). Anyway, I’ve witnessed the magic of the marriage these two items firsthand. You wash your floor with a mop and then squeegee all of the excess water into the drain. Isn’t that smart? Who knew? Well, you probably knew, but it took me a week to figure it out. I’ll let you tally your own score on this first pop quiz. Don’t be smug is you did well. They’ll get harder.”