Very potent, not so potable

Ugh, I'm so bad! It's been a month, so I'm sorry!!! It's not that I haven't been eating, because I have. Actually quite a lot. Actually the personal trainer at my new gym even told me I'm a mere 3 percent away from being in the obese category. He also told me that the muscle in each of my arms only makes up 1.6% of all the muscle in my body. This may explain why I can't do a single pull up. His name was literally Sparky so I don't really care what he or his electro pulse machine has to say about me and my lack of muscles and abundance of fat :)

So most of the reason I've been so busy is because of work, but I was also sick. My stomach finally gave way to the bacteria of the new world and I spent 3 days struggling to keep anything in my stomach. Initially I was confused. I mean, I'd been eating random meat products from street vendors for 2 months now, so why was my stomach defeated from a bowl of rice with vegetables? It didn't fit. And after three days of pain and discomfort I saw the key to my illness: my roommate. Kind, but clueless, he had been feeding me tap water for weeks. Tap water in the U.S. can be laden with lead and other eventually harmful trace elements, however it won't make your intestines curl into a tightly wound spring ready to burst at any moment. In Taiwan however, the water cannot be consumed without being boiled first due to harmful bacteria the government says is drinkable but really isn't (it's on their website, the big liars!) All Taiwanese boil their water, and thus usually end up drinking warm water even though its 95 degrees outside. But the roommate, god bless him and his unfathomable logic, thought since I was a foreigner, I was impervious to the Taiwanese water bacteria and told me to drink freely from the Brita filter he filled daily with unboiled tap water. I assumed he boiled it. But we all know, assuming makes and ass out of u and me. Amazingly enough my stomach lasted two weeks on Taiwanese tap water. After that it gave way and punished me for my stupidity. And after three days of watching me dying slowly, my roommate refilled the brita filter in front of me, with tap water and I asked him, "Have you been drinking that too?" He replied "No, of course not, I never drink water unless its boiled." Too weak to strangle him, I was relieved; I finally had my answer. Upon refilling my body with amoeba free water, I quickly returned to my normal state and took solace in the fact that I can still eat anything, its just the water I need to watch out for.

Ironically a week later I took my kindergarten kids on a super fun field trip to the Taipei Water Treatment Facility, half education/half water park! During our tour of the park we watched an educational film all in Chinese that toasted the achievements in water filtration in Taiwan and even showed children drinking straight from the faucet at home. I was appalled. It was worse than the blatant lies that the U.S. government feeds us. They even have a museum here called "The Museum of Drinking Water," what a farce! Such a place should surely not exist yet, as there is no water suitable for drinking still. Yet for such a ruse they have going on here, everyone on this island still seems to know that you must at all times, boil your water. Our field trip ended with my 15 toddlers, sweating in the midday sun, eyes agape, watching the other children play in the sprinklers and wading pools, not allowed to go near it, not even stick a finger in it, because my school deemed it all too unsafe. My thoughts exactly...



http://www.twd.gov.tw/watertravel/wpark/english/museum/museum.htm

The museum of drinking water. The website is so cute with its happy water drop mascot, yet note, not once do they mention dysentery.