18 Septiembre, 2011

I took a brave step a couple of days ago. I decided to wash my clothes. With a couple minutes downtime one afternoon I thought (after seeing the washing machine the first day I arrived) that I'd ask to put my clothes in and start it, then get to read my book for an hour or so. Little did I know... The machine was plugged in. About 5 cups of laundry detergent powder was poured on top of my clothes. Buckets of water were filled to pour into the machine. And the power button was pushed so that the machine roared to life, splashing a constant ranging rapids of soap suds and water everywhere. It was kind of like taming a beast. I was asking my family member who was showing me how to do this for the third time how much time I needed to wait before coming back to the machine to take the clothes out and hang them out on the line. His third response after failing to be understood  the previous two times was to grab one of my shirts out of the machine, throw it into the bumpy sink, and scrub as fast and as furious as possible, alternating scrubbing a soap bar and tossing buckets of continuous water on the article of clothing with one hand, while rubbing the shirt as vigorously as possible across the bottom of the sink with the other, and then running outside to clip the shirt to the drying line before running back in before the water bucket of constantly-flowing water overflowed in order to keep the process going. It was nothing short of an extreme sport. He gestured for me to take over from there, at which point there was a moment in which neither one of us moved except for a laugh that escaped my mouth; then I spent the next hour running back and forth, alternating throwing buckets of water on each article of clothing, vigorously scrubbing with what I felt was about 100 times more soap than was necessary, and sweating so much that when all was said and done it was almost comical that I had just showered.