Washed up

I had to wash some clothes today, finally. Like in a washer. I have been hand washing clothes in my sink using my hot water heater upper that I use for tea, drinking water, instant coffee, etc etc. My jeans are black, but they were getting ridiculous. So I thought, no big deal, I will run them through the plastic and rubber Chinese washing machine here in the dorm and put them out to dry on the line on the "patio." I stuck some other things in too. I filled up the washer with hot water I carried to it in my all purpose basin-- the taps are cold only -- and turned on the spigot. Someone had thoughtfully used duct tape to attach the spigot to the hose used to fill up the machine. This seemed to take too long, so i looked in to see all the water had drained out, which also explained why my shoes were wet. There's always something wet on the ground around here. The cook happened by and in a combination of my little Chinese, his no English, and sign language, he explained which of the knobs meant the water would not drain out. I started all over again. The washing took about 15 minutes, created a frightening amount of black water, and was basically a mechanical version of scrubbing clothes over rocks. The banging noises and violent rocking for the spin cycle resulted in no great loss of water, which would have facilitated the line drying, but no more noise than randomly occurs on any given day here. It is never quiet. I have no idea why there is banging. There seem to be different sources all the time. I almost don't notice it any more. Almost.

I hung my stuff on the line to dry and had a flashback to my freshman year at college where I'd used a dorm machine and the line in the basement for laundry, and someone ripped off my Gandalf T shirt. Surely no one was going to want my jeans and a couple of cotton shirts that despite their day to day comfort were looking to me at that moment as devices to extend the time my laundry was going to take to dry. It started to rain only at about 4, so it wasn't a total, er, wash. I think my jeans will dry in a couple of days.

Oh yeah, the school has been scrubbing itself down for the last 3 days. "People from Beijing" (???) are coming to inspect. Yesterday, the entire school, 1300 people or so including adults, stopped for almost 2 hours and scrubbed inside and out, including the plastic soccer field. (there is no grass here at all) The guys at the guardhouse put on tall rubber boots over their uniforms and used a huge fire hose to hose the guardhouse down. Kids scrubbed the bars on all the windows of all 6 or so stories (yes, there are bars on all the windows -- we barely notice them ) and the gates that lock us in at night with brushes. Groups took rags to the poles on the basketball hoops. There was a sort of advance inspection team sent out yesterday ahead of the big wigs, and apparently the school didn't pass muster! So this morning, they were at it again! The place smells better. One comment from the team was that the cars inside the compound weren't clean enough and that dirty cars like that belonged on the street, not in the school grounds. The school "grounds" are entirely paved except for a planting area out front and a curious inner courtyard no one ever steps in. The sense of urgency about this "campaign" as Y called it, recalling "campaigns" from her earlier life a little fondly, was somewhat diminished today. Yesterday there were no slackers I could see, but today, out in the distance, past the plastic ball field out where kids were supposed to be scrubbing the tennis nets, a few looked like they were goofing around. It was somewhat heartening to see a few out of step with their mates --- rarely happens in group activities.