Laundry Day

There are, of course, tons of little things that I come across in daily life to remind me that yes, I do really live in England. In some cases, the English has completely replaced the American. My last visit home, I found myself in awe of hot and cold water coming out of the same faucet and was constantly running to the microwave forgetting that, unlike my English one, it would actually stop once the timer ran out.

One thing I have never gotten used to, however, is laundry. The first night of my semester abroad, I tried to do a load of laundry. It took three hours and ended with me wringing sopping wet clothes out over the sink while my roommates tried to look up "UK Laundry Symbols" in between hysterical laughing fits. "Remember the time emma had no pants?" became a mantra of the next four months.

Nothing has ever come close to matching that incident in terms of catastrophic levels (well, except the time I flooded the bathroom in Greece with the shower and once again had no pants, but no laundry machine was involved), but laundry continues to be a slightly weird adjustment. During London2, we had no racks, so every spare radiator, towel rack and coat hook was perpetually draped with jeans, t-shirts, dresses, etc. Last year we had racks, but the sheets were too big and so would be laid over our dining room table like a small white circus tent. This year, we actually have a dryer! But, as I learned yesterday, it takes over five hours to finish a cycle. Also, there is a long, rectangular drawer that fills up with water an requires emptying before each load. It's not difficult, just odd.

As of yet, there have been no laundry disasters. I'm relatively confident we can keep that going, but only relatively. It is England, after all.