Email to Dad

Good Morning Dad!

This has been a heck of a week.  I started feeling isolated this weekend, ironically when I met the other JETs in my area.  I guess I just didn't realize what I was missing until I was faced with it.  Other JETs hang out with each other every night.  Some live next to each other.  And to top it all off they have spent a month with each other this summer that I didn't get to.  Poor Me :(

On the bright side, when I get upset I clean.  And I don't like going to sleep.  So my kitchen is almost done.  I only have the fridge left to clean top to bottom, and then to clean the floor.  Of course, I have to also wash all the shelves and what not in the connected tv area.  But still, the kitchen is almost done.  I have even done the windows, the sliding door, and all of the connected petal pieces that I soaked in glass cleaner, because for some reason that worked wonders on the never-coming-off sticky gunk that was plastered all over them.  Before they were kind of a orange/off white.  Now they are a bright ivory.

I'm going to be so proud of this place when I'm done.  Maybe I will buy my PS3 as a congratulatory, 'I have nothing else to clean' present.  I have also talked to my supervisor, Nakashima-san today about new screens for the doors and windows.  They are so old that the ones in the tatami room are completely ripped from the top (but in a straight line, so it isn't too open, but needs to be fixed).

I also got the washing machine working.  So the problems were:
1) didn't agitate enough
2) water would take 3-8 hours to drain out
3) lint still on clothes after washing

So I was messing around with it while the water was trying to drain and I saw this tube that connected the washer to the drain.  I picked up the tube and the water started to go down really fast.  So I messed with it a bit more, and the washer drained out.  I thought, hey this is good.  Even if I have to hold the hose each time, it's an improvement.  Then I found a cleaning brush with a long handle that had been left in the back where the tube was.  I used the brush to prop up the tube, and I don't even have to hold it now!  It just drains on its own in a matter of minutes.

Next, it didn't agitate the clothes, so they didn't really get clean.  I was looking at the top of the machine and noticed a button that James hadn't mentioned.  The one next to it,  had the word 'soft' and was pushed.  So I pushed the unknown button, and started it up and lo!  The washer agitates much more strongly and for a longer time. 

Flushed with my success, I looked at the lint trap on the inside of the washer.  There was a plastic button that obviously belonged to it, but I had tried to remove it before and failed.  I tried again, and because I tried to pull at it a different way, it came out.  Now the washer pulls the lint off the clothes.

The washer is still old, but I don't even know that I want a new one.  This one has a great cycle for my delicate clothes and it works fine.  The only thing is that for whatever reason the towels came out stiff and not how I wanted.  I'm considering telling Nakashima-san to just wait on the washer and give me new wallpaper instead (which is BADLY needed). 

The morale of this story is - never give up (never surrender).  If I had taken what James said as the only possibility, I would be trying to find a way to get all my heavy clothes up and down a set of dangerous stairs to go out and clean them at the laundry mat.  But I just kept poking at it, and tried a lot of different things.  So when you have something that is impossible, don't treat it like that - just treat it like an old washer that you just need to 'adjust'.

BTW, I'm going to post this washer story on my web blog.  That turned out better than I thought it would. 

Hope this makes up for the lack of a good morning email yesterday.

I'm going to bed.

Love Kate

Or actually, I should say, I'm going to tatami.

(buy computer!)  :)