Lukewarm

One of my landlords stopped by to discuss the power. So. I can't run the water heater and the stove at the same time. That must have been it, he says. Water heater? What water heater?

No wonder my showers have been lukewarm. Really this living situation just gets better and better. Hot water? Fantastic. Except neither of us can figure out how to turn it on. We both clearly agree that the on light is not, in fact, on. That was stated several times. We both started turning different knobs and pushing on valves to see what would happen but nothing was happening--no clicks or whooshes or water noises. As a last effort I pushed a black lever that had a spiderweb on it and a pressure stream of water shot straight out at us! I yelped a high-pitched "oi!" that I picked up in Russia and he yelled "quick! test it! is it hot?" as if our other knob turning could have possibly had some silent but immediate effect on the water nearest to the spiderweb valve. Nope, still cold. As I giggled about the whole water squirting situation my landlord says "you made a Portuguese noise!" I guess "oi" works all over continental Europe. My first word! (That is besides "thank you", which a friend of mine informed me that I have been saying with the masculine ending, likely either putting a big sign over my head that says 'foreigner', or sparking a full-body double-take).

All in all great news though! This means whenever we figure out how to turn this thing on I'll have hotter-than-lukewarm showers. And I can now respond when people talk to me in Portuguese with various versions of "oi".