The Evil Laundry Lady

I did laundry for the first time in about a month. YES, I am not living in the Middle Ages anymore and I don’t have to wash my underwear by hand!  Major accomplishment!  But now, here is my “entertaining” or some kind of story about my first laundry experience here.  I will just add that in Avignon I never did my own laundry, Annick always did it for me and it was awesome. 

Here I go…so originally 3 weeks ago my teacher asked the laundry lady if I was allowed to do laundry and she said no.  Basically she was a jerk from the start but I sort of accepted it and said whatever. 

Last week Jose asked Manuella, the woman who is in charge of the boarding school, if we were allowed to do our laundry.  Surprisingly, she said yes but just said just give her a day to talk to the laundry lady.  So, I went back the next day and asked if everything was all set and she said not quite and that the principal had to speak with the laundry lady.  She also explained to me that it is not HER washing machine and that it’s not HER choice if we can use them or not.  So I figured out that there was some type of issue and (correctly) assumed that the laundry lady didn’t want us to use the machines.

The following day Jose spoke to Manuella and said that the principal spoke with the laundry lady but also said that the first time we do laundry that we should tell her (Manuella) and she can teach us.

Of course, Wednesday, the lady when we both want to do laundry, Manuella isn’t there because it’s her day off!  Jose and I decided to do our laundry without Manuella and approach the laundry lady ourselves and ask for a quick lesson.

Jose and I went to the laundry lady and of course Jose politely says “after you” as we walk into the laundry lady’s room.  In other words, he fed me to the wolves and made me do the speaking to the evil laundry lady.  I politely said Hello (saying hello is very important in France, you say hello to the employees every time you enter a store or else you’re rude!!) and asked if we could do our laundry today.  She “kindly” (NOT) told us that she never agreed to this and if it were up to her we wouldn’t be allowed to use them because they are “professional” machines.  (Key Note: French washers are normally half the size of American washers, when she says they are professional washers, she means that they are actually NORMAL American sized washers!).  She then proceeded to ask us who gave us authorization to use the machines and Jose answered Manuella and the principal.  Then she asked Jose “well how did you do your laundry last year (in quite the condescending tone) and Jose politely answered that he didn’t live at the boarding school last year.  I then asked if she could show us how the machines worked real quick and she rudely stated that we should go ask the people who gave us permission to use the machines and that the machines are in the other room.  We said “ok” and figured out the machines ourselves.  What a BITCH!  She then proceeded to mumble underneath her breath that if we break the machines she is going to go tell some higher-up person…blah blah blah.  If you ask me, if she was truly worried about them breaking rather than being a cold-hearted bitch (pardon my French…get it?), she would have told us what settings to use!

Of course there were two different kinds of washers and two different dryers and my washer took about 30 minutes longer than the one Jose chose.  My clothes were still soaked and I decided to change washing machines and after changing all my clothes over I decided it was a bad idea because there was still water sitting in my machine.  Don’t worry eventually found the “spin” cycle (luckily Jose knew that word because I sure didn’t)!  The dryer also took me at last an hour (probably more) to dry my clothes!  Maybe I used the wrong setting? 

After two hours plus of doing one load of laundry, my laundry was complete and now I have clean clothes. AMEN it’s about time!  After that I felt like I just won a marathon or something, simple things become huge accomplishments when you are in a foreign country!