Bits, bobs, and every day life

Although our life at the manor has become routine, I thought I might share with you what we do all day at the manor and some interesting aspects of British culture. The first thing you notice pretty quickly is the cars. Most of them are quite small. As you can see, my Focus would fit in quite well here.

A Focus (sort of) just like mine!

Here is a picture of one of my favorite cars...

One of the housekeepers drives this little car - it looks like a lot of fun :) One day, a Hummer came through the driveway at the Manor. Isaac and I were so shocked - we could not believe that there would be such a big car here. I think the cars are this little for a lot of reasons. One is that the streets are quite narrow. It would be hard to drive a Town Car or our Jeep through the narrow streets of our city. Additionally, gas is rather expensive. It is somewhat misleading because it doesn't look too bad. But upon further notice, you realize that gas is priced per liter. There are 3.78 liters to every gallon. Gas the other day was 1.12 pounds per liter. This means that it was about 4.23 pounds per gallon. With the current exchange rate, this equates to approximately $6.52 per gallon. And I thought gas prices in the US were high!

Another interesting difference is laundry. At home, I have a front loading washer, and Greg can do his and Isaac's laundry in 3 loads. The loads do not fill the washer. It takes about 45 minutes to wash and about 45 minutes to dry a regular load of their laundry. The laundry machine here is also a front loader, but here is what it looks like:

Baby washing machine :)

Although it looks rather small, you can get what I would consider a small to medium sized load into it. On the 30 degree celcius cotton and linen cycle, it takes about 1 hour and 2 minutes to wash your clothes, which is not too bad until you put your clothes into the dryer....

Condenser

The dryer in the faculty laundry is actually called a condenser. The condenser extracts water from your clothes. It can also extract color from your clothes. So we have learned a few things while here....first of all, never mix darks with whites in the dryer. It will make your whites very very dingy and they will perhaps turn blue or red. Also, do not wash large loads.  Getting your clothes "cupboard dry" can take 3 hours or more. The more clothes you have, the longer it will take. The setting on the dryer goes up to 9 hours. Always empty out the filter and the water container. The filter is in the condenser where you would normally find it in a dryer. The water in the condenser does not vent out as steam, as in our dryers in the USA. Instead, water collects in the upper left hand compartment of the dryer. If you pull it out and find a lot of water, you know that your clothes are probably dry. If there is little water, you are going to have to dry them again. You cannot rush your laundry, nor should you do it if you are in a hurry. Also, there is only one free laundry facility for faculty. So we have all established the rule that if you come upon clothes in the dryer that are dry and you need to use the dryer, it is OK to take the other person's clothes out of the dryer. You really have no way of knowing how long the dryer will take, so checking on your clothes every hour or so is definitely important. Additionally, your clothes tend to come out wrinkled. If you are lucky, some of the wrinkles will fall out as the clothes hang in your cupboard but it is a good thing we have an iron. Now, for those of you who know me well, I gave up ironing one year for lent and never took it back up...however, here, I have had to start ironing again. It is quite sad, but I am happy that my mother taught me how to iron when I was young - thanks Mom!

My normal sized load of laundry at Harlaxton

The picture above shows you how much laundry I did this week as one load of darks. This load of laundry took 1hour and 4 minutes to wash and 2 1/2 hours to dry. So it took me more than 3 1/2 hours to do this load of laundry. If you cant tell what it is, here is a description of the load: 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of slacks, 1 pair of jeans, 4 short sleeved shirts, 1 pair of underwear and 2 pairs of socks. I never realized how much I loved my washer and dryer until I came here :) Doing laundry has made me realize the need to slow down and plan ahead. Life is good...you just have to be patient sometimes!