Laundry and Locked in the Bathroom

Yesterday was a very productive day. I made some good headway on the fundraising project, drafteds some critical outlines for some of the projects we're seeking grants for, and updated my database.

My big accomplishment yesterday, however, was making it the dry cleaners. I have been here for two weeks, and well, it was time to make the trip. The good news is, I hadn't run out of clean clothes, the bad news, however, was that I would the next day. Procrastination.

I don't mind going to the market, or grabbing food by myself, but I thought that it's kind of a high risk situation to be taking 90% of your clothes to a dry cleaner without knowing hardly any "dry cleaning" words.

"Do you want the clothes washed together? How would you like this shirt pressed? What do you want to do with these pants?"

Ahhh, just the thought of having to wear shrunken, tiedied clothes for a day or two makes me pretty embarrased just thinking about it.

Luckily, one of my co-workers agreed to go with me and be my translator.

We went out to my favorite cafe for dinner afterwards, had another great meal, and got to know each other a lot better.

Walter, thank God, speaks English very well. He actually went to school to be a translator. I believe he speaks Spanish, English, Italian, and

French (or at least can translate those!)

After dinner, I made a stop in the bathroom to get something out of my eye. You can see the little slidding door above has a bit of a funny lock. It didn't lock when you turned the knob, so I played with it and manually got it to catch.

After I washed whatever was in my eyes out, I tried to open the door. Oh yeah, the lock's broken dummy! So I effectively locked myself in this tiny bathroom for a couple of minutes. It's a good thing I wasn't claustrophobic, because I think I would have lost it in there!

I used one of my keys to poke the latch up and was freed! Phew! Not going to do that again!