Water, Water Everywhere

One thing you do a lot of as an EFL teacher is going over names of basic household objects. This often involves matching games with nondescript little cartoons of the objects in question, be they combs, clothes hangers, or dishwashers. After a while, you think you know these cold.

Well, apparently I don't, because, for the first five weeks I was here, I failed to recognize a washing machine in my own apartment.

Now, by way of justifying my own intelligence, the machine in question looked nothing like the washing machines I've used all my life back home. This one was small enough to fit under the sink. Moreover, nothing on it identifed it clearly as a device for washing clothes. The brand name is "Samara"--not Maytag or anything else that would be known in the West. I had mistaken it for some kind of clothes hamper my now ex-roommate used to keep his dirty linens in.

I only discovered it was a washing machine today when my toothbrush fell behind it. This made it necessary to move the device, in the process of which I discovered it had an electrical plug. Intrigued, I took off what I had thought was the lid of the hamper and saw a small fan-like device. Immediately I guessed this was for agitating water in the wash.

When I returned from various outings, I decided to give the machine a whirl. I put in all of my dirty socks, some detergent, and hot water (the machine needs to be filled with water manually) and turned the dial. For about 20 minutes, it agitated my socks, after which I rinsed them out manually in my sink and repeated the process with my underwear.

The machine lacks the convenience of a conventional washer. As I have noted, it has to be filled with water and emptied out manually. It doesn't give a rinse cycle, nor does it do anything to wring out clothes once it is finished washing them. Its small size means that it can, at most, wash three or four shirts at a time. It also has a tendency to slosh water on the floor if you fill the machine up too far, so that I ended up with water all over my bathroom floor.

Nonetheless, it's a vast improvement over having nothing, the situation I thought I was in the first five weeks I was here. My socks do at least come out really clean after a run through this device, something I cannot say for my attempts at hand-washing up to now. Over the coming week, once I purchase some clothes hangers, I intend to put every piece of clothing I own through the machine at least once, and get the massive pile of sordid cloth on my bedroom floor taken care of.