Laundry Day!

Sunday was our first official day of doing laundry abroad...and it was an ordeal! I had to laugh at how difficult it was for us, so the story has to be told. First off, Sunday is our designated "laundry day," so I sorted all of our clothes and headed downstairs to check out the laundry room. To my dismay, the washing machine was completely different than any I had used at home. It had a bunch of indistinguishable symbols, so I had no idea what cycle was what! I went back upstairs and dragged Mark down to the laundry room with me, but he had no clue either! Luckily, he spotted the manual which was hanging on the wall, so I left the clothes there and took the manual upstairs to translate! To add to our difficulties, the manual was in 5 different languages, but I could not tell what any of them were! I tried translating them on the web, but none of them would translate with proper instructions. Finally, I decided to go a different route. The washing machine is made by Hoover, so I went back downstairs (for the 3rd time!) and found the model #. I was able to locate an English version of the Hoover manual online...woohoo!. After going through it and figuring out the mysterious symbols, I drew myself a diagram to indicate the buttons for the wash cycle, temperature gauge and "start"! I never would have thought that it would be such a difficult process! After the first load, I had the kinks worked out (the first load ran for 90 mins!...the time settings are quite different from the machines in the States!) It was a tough but good lesson to learn!