Today was a full day!
I went to church this morning with my host sister and a lot of other
people from the street (and other Trainees).
The service was in Tagalog but the priest made a point, in the beginning
of the service, to welcome us in English and explain what the service would be
about. He preached a sermon on the “5
loaves and 2 fish” story and was, apparently, a funny guy and made the crowd
laugh a lot.
After church, Chelsea and I took our host sisters to the
nail salon and we treated them to a ‘foot spa’ because we kept hearing about
how cheap manicures and pedicures are here.
We also wanted to have a nice bonding opportunity and it was well
received. For 3 foot spas and a
manicure, the total was 830 pesos… that’s about $19.75. Unfortunately, my manicure is completely gone
now after my laundry marathon…
I just finished a five hour ordeal that will undoubtedly
make me worship my washer and dryer when I finally reunite with them again… in
26 months.
I was supposed to do my laundry yesterday with the rest of
the family but it ended up being pushed back to today instead. My fellow Trainee (and sugar mommy), Chelsea,
did hers yesterday and warned me not to take it lightly. I went into it optimistically because it
seemed like my laundry bag was pretty light.
It had been about a week and a half since I had laundry done but I was
re-wearing a lot of things (mostly shorts and skirts, but also the non-sweat
drenched shirts) so I probably had about a load and a half by American
standards.
We started by sorting everything into whites, lights, and
darks (which I rarely do in the States but my mom will be happy about) and got
out our equipment. We needed 3 huge
basins, buckets, liquid detergent, a wash board, and a “loofah” type
scrubber. We rinsed each load separately
from the faucet on the wall of the “kitchen”/breezeway and then prepared the
soapy water in separate basins.
After transferring the whites to the soapy solution we let
them soak and moved onto rinsing everything else. Once everything was soaked, we began
scrubbing. And we scrubbed for,
basically, 4 hours. My host sister,
Michelle, taught me how to scrub all the clothes appropriately and I don’t
think my clothes have ever been this clean.
And some of them were new when I brought them here!
(Btw, the kitchen/food prep area is behind us. Lisette is back there making lunch.)
I only had one towel to wash (thank goodness!) and it
literally took at least 15 minutes to wash it thoroughly. You have to use the wash board and scrubber
for this kind of thing and you work on a ~6”x12” section of towel at a time,
rotating the towel as you go. Then once
you’ve spent about 10 minutes on one side, you have to turn it over and do the
same thing for the other side!
Other than the towel, you have to use the scrubber on socks
and shorts; for everything else, you rub the cloth between your knuckles (and
you get blisters).
After washing everything, you must rinse. And rinse. And rinse, again. Three times (for each load of colors) you
have to soak the clothes, rinse them with running water, and wring them
out. This takes forever, too.
Once everything is all rinsed out and smelling so fresh and
so clean, you just hang everything on hangers (clothespin the for extra
security) and sukay-sukay them in the rafters under the roof! Unfortunately, I had only bought 10 hangers
yesterday (because I’m dumb) so today I had to run out and buy 20 more so all
of my things could dry.
Oh, and about the drying thing… it’s been raining here
allllll day long, so it’s going to be a while until all that laundry is
actually dry!
My laundry experience today has really been humbling for me
and my spoiled American ways. To have
the ability to take 5 minutes to round up the laundry and throw it in the
washer, walk away for an hour, come back and transfer it to the dryer, come
back in another hour and have clean clothes is an amazing capability that we
all take for granted. I’ll be spending the
next 2 years of my life devoting a chunk of my weekend to washing clothes. Or I’ll just be stinky a lot (which doesn’t
seem so bad after today!) :)
So I'm here reading your blog after returning from Sunday mass at St. Peter's. The mass was a little shorter than the last time I was there...LOL. If I had any idea I could have let you have the washboard that's in my mom's basement to take with you. It was my grandmother's and is at least 5 times the size of the one you're using...perhaps it would cut down your laundry time to maybe 2 hours??? Hahahaha. Just yesterday Ricky and I were having a conversation about the things we take for granted...I don't remember what prompted it but we had that talk none-the-less. And next time you'll know to get the manicure AFTER laundry day (just stinks to ruin a good manicure!!). Take care. Ciao bella!
ReplyDeleteAmazing laundry story. I'm going to bet that nothing gets tossed in the laundry until it really NEEDS washed. (Unlike when you and Kaity were small and I would find folded clothes in the dirty laundry just because you didn't feel like putting them away.....OK, that was mostly Kaity!)
ReplyDeleteLoved seeing the pictures of your family and surroundings. Keep them coming. Love you Sweetie!
Whew! I'm tired. I guess you have a whole new appreciationi for those sparkling clean white shirts your students are wearing. And I'll stop complaining when my dryer randomly stops, and I need to restart it.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading of your laundry experience, I am thinking you are happy that you are not doing laundry for a husband and a couple of kids! Can't even imagine what that would be like!
ReplyDeleteLoved the pictures!
I called Carmen and read the latest post to her. She and I prefer to do laundry the good old Ameerican way!
Love you, Missy!