my illiteracy

You know living in a foreign country presents all kinds of interesting problems.  And, these problems are only compounded if you are illiterate in the native language. 

Well, I am not exactly illiterate.  I can read maybe a thousand Chinese characters (of the appox. 8000 a college grad in Taiwan knows).  So, my mere thousand characters do not qualify me to understand the directions on the back of a bottle of Drano.  Heck, it doesn't even qualify me to be able to pick out the product I need off of the "cleaning supply shelf" at the local "everything for sale" store.

But, thankfully, Taiwan is kind to their illiterate.  The bottle of Drano has great graphics on the front to let me know it is Drano (it even has the English word, of course that is partly under the price tag).  And, there are nice, easy to understand line drawings on the back of the bottle telling me how to use the product.  And, I do know enough Chinese to be able to read the "1/2 bottle" and "1 hour" and other stuff like that. 

So, I am grateful for the people at Drano thinking about me and my illiteracy when they wrote the directions for how to use the stuff.  I don't remember there being little pictures that go along with directions on stuff in the States, but it has been awhile since I looked.  So, this summer I will look and see if I just remember wrong or not.

Oh . . . and I did successfully get my tub's drain un-clogged! :)