Willkommen in Deutschland Part 2

So we thought our next big adventure would be our weekend excursion to The Netherlands, but we were wrong; it turns out it happened before we even left. After we had been here for a few days, we were starting to run out of clothes, so in order to avoid the same situation we were in before our bags got here, I decided it was time for laundry.

The apartment we're staying at has a washer and dryer (which is pretty good, many Europeans don't use a dryer), and I had at least an idea of what all the words on the machine said. It is a top loader, so I worried about where to put the soap, but after a quick google search (what did we do before the internet?), I discovered the soap drawer. I separated the clothes, figured out which soap to use (interestingly, they use a different soap depending on whether or not it is whites or colors, all of the stuff for whites has bleach), and guessed on the amount because there was no handy indicator line like back home.

I closed the door and started it up. It started humming, so I walked out thinking things were good to go. After a few minutes, the buzzing stopped, and the "ende" light was flashing. Huh? Pretty sure my clothes weren't done yet. I pulled out my dictionary to make sure I didn't just misunderstand, but everything was what I thought. I started searching online for things like "how to turn on a German washer," but nothing had anything that solved my problem (I guess that's what it was like before the internet...). After about 30 minutes, I gave up and went back to working.

When Matty came home, we went back to work at trying to get the thing to turn on. I had to go Skype into a meeting, so I left him with the dictionary and his great problem solving abilities. Sure enough, after about 20 minutes, I heard the washer start up. It turns out the family who lives here turns the water off when they're not using it. Who would of thought?

Awhile later, we had some sparkling clean clothes. It's wonderful to have the dryer, but it's kind of funny. It takes forever and sounds like an airplane taking off then landing, then taking off then landing. We had a good time going to sleep that night. Good times, good times.

**We are over here for 6 weeks while Matt does an internship with the legal counsel for the church. We swapped apartments with a German family who were coming and doing research at BYU. It's been interesting so far, but we're having a great time!