January 31, 2010

On the Carousel at the Tuileries Claire, Corin, Anna, Megan and Erin

at the Eiffel Tower

One of my SMC students was in Paris this weekend, and she and her friend stayed with us. The girls had a blast with them; I think they are sick to death of me. We took them to the Eiffel Tower Friday night and Megan went with them to Montmarte yesterday. Today we went down to the Place Concorde, Musee d'Orsay, and walked around the Tuileries.



Let's Get This Laundry Started


Our washing machine is the size of a mailbox. So is our dryer, yet it still manages to lose as many socks as the one in the States. Laundry in France is quite a complex process. Since the washer only fits about 3 articles of clothing, laundry begins on Monday and ends Sunday evening. In addition, the water in France has a lot of lime in it. The result is that all dark clothes get bleached out, unless you add a darkening agent. Perversely, all white clothes turn gray, unless you add bleach. I haven't even attempted to figure out the chemistry behind this.










We are one of the lucky few to have a dryer; most families we know are having to line dry all of their clothes. However, it must be noted that the dryer doesn't actually dry the clothes. There are three settings:










ready to wear




ready to iron (I don't think so)




ready to hang (no, not hang yourself, hang up to dry)










It has taken me six months to figure out that the ready to wear setting is not real. In fact, none of the settings mean anything. They are just printed on the dial to make foreigners feel that they are actually drying their clothes, and to suck up lots of electricity without actually accomplishing the task at hand.










Here's what happens. You load three pairs of socks and a T-shirt into the dryer. The dryer is then full. You pick a setting, any setting. It makes no difference. Then you press the start button. The dryer starts, and then ten minutes later stops, presumably to rest. Five minutes later, the whole process begins again. Occasionally, the machine will stop completely. Don't be fooled. This does not mean your clothes are dry; it is merely a signal that the dryer doesn't feel like running anymore. Hopefully, you are home and able to reset all of the dials to their meaningless positions and start the whole process again. After approximately six hours, you might open the dryer door, hoping that your few articles of clothing are, you know, dry. They will not be dry. They will be damp. At which point you either pitch all of your clothes out the window and go buy new stuff or you trot out your handy dandy clothes rack and hang them up.










At some point, you might decide to skip the dryer part of the laundry chore altogether and go straight from the washer to the clothes rack. This would be a huge mistake. After waiting for two days for the clothes to dry, you will fold them into stiff little squares, put them in your childrens' rooms, and wait hopefully for the kids to wear them. Instead, your children will bring them out to you, glaring furiously, and inform you that the clothes are much too stiff to wear. You then begin the whole process again.










As you can imagine, this experience has led me to be very careful about what actually constitutes dirty laundry. I admit that I occasionally pretend I don't see my kids turn their socks inside out and wear them again. We also wear lots of dark clothes. This is a particularly good strategy for Erin, who views her clothing as a large, multi-colored napkin. I can also frequently be seen sneaking into the kids' laundry bins and pulling out stuff that, in my estimation, is "not that dirty."










So, when get back to the U.S., please don't ask us if we really learned our way around Paris or how many other countries we were able to visit. We were too busy doing laundry.