Don't forget to shower!

A friend reminded me of this story I wanted to share, a bit of insight. In America we like to make small talk with things like "how are you?" "what's new?" In Indonesia, people also like to ask if you've bathed yet. It really is just in passing, but here most people do shower twice a day (you can get pretty hot and sticky). This question, though more just for chit chat, can sometimes be embarrassing if you answer honestly and, well, just don't feel like bathing yet again. Anyway, here in Aceh, we give our students our cell phone numbers for assignment questions, resulting in some pretty humorous text messages. The second day of school, I received, "Hello Miss Michelle, have you bathed yet?" I decided it would be more professional not to reply...