To drink, or not to drink... water, that is.

Whenever we have teams come, one of the conversations we always have is, "Can we drink the water?"  I think we are the only place in all of Spain where they do NOT recommend you drink the water.  We were told by our leaders when we came that the water wasn't good to drink; and then, we've had random parents from school say, "you're not drinking the water, are you??"  whenever we get sick.

We are SO thankful that there is a ministry who provides water filters for our company!  As a family, we pretty much only drink water... unless there's a special occasion or something fun.  Needless to say, we go through a TON of water... and water filters. :)

All that said, there have been many who have come through and either did not know or did not think much of the warnings... so they drank the water.  And they were fine.  I always tell both sides to our teams that come, and then let them decide if they want to go with bottled water or tap water.

BUT, after this week, I may change my mind. ;)  When we first got here, we were going through culture shock and all sorts of different types of shock, and one day our water came out brownish yellow when I was trying to give the kids a bath.  As always, we went next door to Javi and asked about the water.  He told us it was no big deal.  Every year it happens... he told us it would be fine tomorrow.

We just took it into stride... what else can you do?... and just avoided baths for the kids that day.  He was right.  The next day it was fine.  He was also right... it happens every year.  One day isn't that big of a deal, and I think we've always had other things going on, so we didn't ponder the "why's" too much.

Well, this year, it happened again.  Right after Jonathan's little fiasco at the hospital.  We waited out the day, thinking it would be fine the next day.  Nope.  Or the next day... nope.  It has now been like this for over a week...maybe a week and a half.  We couldn't delay baths that long, obviously... haha... so then it really made us start thinking, "Why is the water brown... is it dangerous?  Is it safe to bathe in? to brush teeth in?"  I think it was spurred on by the idea that Jonathan had a healing incision that we were trying to keep clean.

This week, the kids were all beginning to feel better and were going a bit stir crazy.  So Wes decided to fill up our little pool in the front yard.  It's shallow, but kinda big as far as inflatable pools go... so he put the hose in and left.  About an hour later, I look out and see yucky yellowish, brownish water in the pool (just like we were seeing in the tub... only there was a whole lot more of it!)  Sorry, I didn't think about it in time to get a "before" picture.  Wes decided to to put in the clarifier that he has for the pool to see what it would do to the water.  It's supposed to separate the dirt from the water, so that the filter can get rid of the dirt.  Oh my goodness... scary!!

Can you see the dirt that it separated from the water!?!?!  This is the "fresh" water we had just put in the pool... no kids had set foot in it yet! Can you see the dirt that had settled on the bottom?

I don't know about you, but there's NO WAY I'm drinking that tap water!... even on a good day! :)