Thursday, October 23, 2008

por favor, no hueles mi ropa.

I had a really weird experience yesterday, and it might be one of those “you had to be there” moments, but I’m going to write about it anyways.

I came home for lunch and when I walked in the gate, I saw that my windows were open, and I knew immediately that meant the cleaning lady had come. I think I mentioned in the post about my house that there is a cleaning lady who comes once a week. Last week, Mary Carmen (the owner of the house) told me she was coming so I was prepared, and I cleaned my room before she came. Well this time I didn’t know she was coming, so my room was not so clean. Those of you who have lived with me before know that I am not the most organized and neat person. Even if you haven’t lived with me you probably know that. Here in Spain, I don’t have that many clothes so it’s not too hard for me to hang them back up, or put them in my laundry hamper. And I don’t have any of my craft supplies so I can’t start a project and then leave it in the middle of the floor for weeks. So compared to my normal standards of messiness, my room has actually been pretty neat. Yesterday though, I had stuff on my bed and several pairs of shoes on the floor and who knows what else was lying around. But when I came in my room, I found that Mary Carmen had put it all away for me. She also gave me some containers for pens and stuff on my desk, and a few little baskets and a tray to put my jewelry and other stuff that I had out on top of my shoe closet. So that was all great and of course I appreciated that. Then she started telling me that I needed to wash my sheets and pillowcases, which was probably true, but seriously, I don’t need her to tell me when to do that kind of stuff. Then she saw that I had thrown my north face jacket up on one of the shelves, and she was like, oh no that doesn’t fit there. So she pulled it down, and this is the weirdest part, she SMELLED MY JACKET! She smelled it and told me that I needed to wash it! I promise you that jacket does not smell bad! I have worn it one time since I have been here and in no way does it smell bad. I didn’t really know what to do with myself, and then she started rattling off in Spanish about zipping all the zippers on all my clothes before I wash them (while she is doing this to all the zippers on the jacket) and who knows what else, because I was still thinking about how she smelled my jacket. After she left my room, I smelled it myself, then threw it back up on the shelf where it was. Take that Mary Carmen. Just kidding, she is really nice and I think it’s just one of those cultural things that I am going to have to get used to. At the very least, from now on I will make sure my room is clean on Wednesdays.

here is my the offending jacket in its place in the closet.




and here is my reenactment of mary carmen smelling it. but she didn't really make a face like that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

SICK!!!!! you dont wash your jackets?!?!??! what the flip ames? maybe you missed it but over here in the states we wash our jackets pretty routinely, its kinda like that rule about washing your sheets once a year.

thats hilarious