We're enjoying our first overseas trip with the kids this week in Dublin, Ireland. While Jimmy is at work all day, I'm left to wander the streets, and museums, and parks with Eleanor and Hazel. I've been pleasantly surprised by the adaptability of the girls and by Eleanor's sensitivity to the differences between "here" and "home."

Almost immediately after landing in Dublin we made a toilet stop.  Eleanor quickly pointed out that the toilet was different from home.  The handle was on the right, not the left.  The seat was rounder, less oblong, than at home.  I was made keenly aware of the difference in seat shape when I let go of Hazel and watched her tiny butt plunge into one toilet, taking most of her with it.  Oh, and they're deeper than ours, too.

Coming as it does so soon after our house-hunting trip to China, I'm struck by the contrast.  In our fancy Chinese hotel we had a Japanese toilet, complete with bidet. Jimmy freakin' loved the bidet.  Not only did it spray water on his ass, but it had a control panel worthy of the Enterprise. Lots of buttons, lights, and pictographs for one's entertainment, not to mention instructions in two languages.  The water spigot toggled to two different positions and there was a blow dryer under the seat. Most of all, the toilet was efficient.  Flushing produced a powerful sheet of water along the sides and everything was gone in a flash.

In our fancy Irish hotel, the toilet could not be more different.  It has all the standard features of most of the Irish toilets we've seen: handle on the right, big round seat, very deep bowl.  And it has one further standard feature: it has the least efficient flushing action I have ever seen.  Upon flushing, enormous gushing streams of water appear in about 5 positions around the bowl and flow for several seconds.  The effect is a massive churning of water (and whatever else is in there) as some of it slowly drains away.  A great deal of the stuff that was in the toilet before flushing is still there after flushing.

I'm trying to figure out the metaphor here.  What are these toilets trying to tell me?  I'm too jet-lagged to think about it.  Let me know your theories.