Laundry Day

Today Mike and I did laundry, and I think we'd waited a bit too long because we'll probably have to do more again on Tuesday since we didn't completely finish. We usually try to do laundry about twice a week. However, this past week I've been feeling a bit under the weather due to a head cold, and so we procrastinated until today.

Doing laundry in Mauritania is a bit different than in the United States, where machines do most of the work. In Mauritania you wash all your clothes by hand in buckets (like the ones in the picture above). Usually this is a chore reserved only for women, but Mike helps me out and we work as a team. I clean the clothes with soap by rubbing and squeezing water through them with my hands (not nearly as well as the Mauritanian women). After I'm done wringing them out, I give them to Mike who uses a bucket of clean water to rinse out the remaining soap and then wrings them out again.

We usually do all the washing inside the house in the bathroom. Then we carry the wet clothes up to the roof, where we hang them out to dry in the sun. We usually have to clean off the clothesline first though, or we will have a line of dirt on our nice clean clothes.



Otherwise we are doing well. Today we got several care packages in the mail. Thank you Lori, Aunt Liz, Dad, Annie, Bob & Karen! We've also received packages from several families from St. Martin's Lutheran, and I keep reminding Mike to write thank you notes. We really appreciate all you are doing, even if we aren't always the best about sending a note in return! I also want to say thank you to Kathy Miller for sending me my stethoscope! I thought it was gone forever! Hope all you ladies at the Birthplace are doing well. It was great to talk to Michelle, Stacy & Di on the phone last week! I'll try to call again soon.

We can hardly believe this week is Thanksgiving! It has gotten much cooler here recently, but nothing like the cold weather you're having back home. Generally the temperature in our house stays about 70-72 degrees, so I'd estimate that it ranges from the upper 50's at night to high 70's during the day. We won't really get a break for Thanksgiving since it is only a holiday in the U.S., but we have plans to celebrate on Friday with the other PCVs here in Nouadhibou. I'm going to try and make a pie, but I'm a little worried about how it will turn out since I've never actually made a whole one by myself. Wish me luck!

Love you all! Happy holidays!