Well living in China makes you plan ahead. No longer can I put in a load of wash and put in on my back in 2 hours. I only brought one long sleeve underwear top, which I was wearing day and night. Needless to say it was getting rather grungy. It was finally warm enough yesterday to peel it off and throw it in the wash. The washing machine was sort of tricky to figure out since it is all in Chinese. One of the other foreign teachers showed me which buttons to push and how many little lights should be on to clean the clothes. I accidentally choose the 4 lights instead of the 3 (as he told me) and it went thru the cycle twice. The very small washing machine, which is the size of 2 drawer filing cabinet, was FULL with just the stuff you see in the picture. Good point being you will never lose any socks in it. You hang everything out to dry, so you have to be patient enough to wait for the heater to come on or for the evaporation part of the water cycle to work. I should have bought and brought some pretty Victoria Secret underwear for display because the hanging contraption sure looks unfeminine with all my comfortable cotton Jockey panties. I am also missing my nice “Bounce Sheet” smell. The machine washes in cold water (so much for making my too big jeans shrink) but did a really good job. I might be because I chose a laundry soap that had the one English word “Attack” on the bag so I figured it might do the job.
Side note: As an experiment I mailed myself a 3 pound padded envelope with a Wired Magazine, a shirt, Lipton pasta mix, and of course 3 Twizzlers (didn’t know then they would have been replaced so quickly) a week before I left. It cost $12.95. I just got the package yesterday. The post office said it would take about 4-6 weeks but it must have gotten on a “really fast boat to China” instead. Yippee, I am having pasta for dinner tonight!
