The Great Laundry Day of 2010

9/29/10
Today was laundry day. Excuse me… the laundry day of all laundry days! I had not done laundry in about 2 weeks, which is crazy talk in the world of PCV life. So instead of taking my afternoon nap I did laundry all afternoon. It took me about 2 and half hours, of squatting in the bathroom and scrubbing clothes my clothes, but I did it.

However that evening it looked like it was going to rain, so I had to move everything inside. I currently have laundry in various places around the house. Including a laundry line completely dedicated to underwear going through the kitchen. Then it not only ended up raining, it down poured. I was sitting up at my host family’s private clinic, listening to the rain hitting the tin roof (which is super loud, if you aren’t used to it), when I started worrying about leaks in my house. So I wrapped myself up in my raincoat (thank you Stephen Lush for the best raincoat a PCV could ask for), and ran back to the house.

That was where I found that the basin in the bathroom (that holds all the water) had overflowed (it has piping that collects rain water from outside) into the kitchen, leaving 2 inches of water in the kitchen and still going. I had no clue what to do. So I went to the front door and yelled “Chewy Pong!” (“Help!”). My host brother walked up to me, and because I have no clue how to explain that in Khmer, I just lead him to the kitchen. And he said “oh!”

It took the efforts of myself, my host brother, and my host sister to try and mop up the water. We ended up using a combination of just kicking the water into the bathroom (where there is a drain), scooping it up with a dustpan, and soaking it up with rugs. Surprisingly the dustpan worked the best.

**Correction: It has been brought to my attention that the "best raincoat a PCV could ask for" was a gift from Stephen and Lindsey. So thank you to my best sister and my best brother-in-law.