Here I am with another post! I attempted to do my laundry Sunday night. The laundry room for my building is located in the basement. I started it around 11 p.m. because all of the machines were free then. The nice thing is that the machines provide bleach. Too bad I didn’t realize that before I went out and bought some. I had my laundry card and stuck it into the washing machine. It kept saying 0.25. So I assumed that the balance on my card was 25 øre (100 øre = 1 Danish krone) left over from the previous person occupant of my room. I had no idea how much it cost to do a washing. I had no idea how to put more money on my card. There were no instructions anywhere on how to do this stuff.
I proceeded to load up the machine. It automatically sensed how many clothes were in there and adjusted some settings accordingly. There were some English instructions posted on the walls, but unfortunately the instructions only said things like, “choose X setting – A, B, C, D.” When I looked at the machine to find those settings, they were all in Danish. So I just guessed and hoped for the best!
Well the machine did not turn on after I loaded it, so I suspected that I needed more than 25 øre on my laundry card. Sure enough, the washing machine flashed 12.25 kroner on its little LCD screen. I looked around the area for some kind of adding-money-to-your-card-machine and found none. So my next guess was to walk over to the Administration building. Voila! There was a machine located in the far right corner of the building! I proceeded to add money, and then headed back to my building’s laundry machine.
I re-loaded the clothes, pressed the start button and everything worked! I went back up to my room and came back later to check on it. I’ll never know if I removed my clothes too early or if the machine was just broken, because my clothes were sopping wet. Clean, yes. But wet. Dripping water everywhere. Hmm. Well I just assumed that the dryer would take care of it. Loaded everything up and bought 50 minutes’ worth of drying time.
Came back in 50 minutes and found that someone had removed my clothes from the dryer and put them in an empty laundry basket. They were wet as ever. I put them back into my laundry bag and dragged the (now heavy) bag back up to my room (it’s times like these when I’m glad I live on the 1st floor). Proceeded to wring as much water as I could out of each item of clothing and then hung them whereever I could find a hook or rack. I put paper towels under the clothes to catch any water that fell.
That was Sunday night, leading into the wee hours of Monday. Now it’s Tuesday afternoon, and many of my clothes are actually dry enough to put away. The clothes I hung in the bathroom are taking longer to dry; the ones I hung in the closet dried the quickest. Interesting.
So that was my little laundry adventure. Next time I will either take my Danish-English dictionary with me to look up the words on the laundry machine, or ask someone to translate it for me. But I may continue to hang some of my clothes instead of using the tumble-dryer; as it saves money in the long run.
In other news…Interaction Design class started today. I’m happy because that class focuses on a lot of what I’m interested in. We also have to do a project where we get to design and carry out a usability study of some kind of user interface. This post is quite long though, so more on that later!
P.S. I’ll upload new pictures tonight!
Hey! Thanks for giving me your blog address! Sounds like you’re having loads of fun!
Do you feel like the classes (like the one you mentioned, Knowledge Management) is formatted like classes here in the US? And is it different to take classes with people from different countries? Do you guys get enough free time to travel elsewhere?
Sorry about the questions, I am just really interested!
I miss you, and huggles.
Hey Julia! The classes are different, at least the Knowledge Management one is. It’s a lot more interactive, and the professor is always asking us for our opinion on whether or not we should cover something. Things seem less set in stone than they do in the states. Also, they have oral exams at the end of the semester where you have to defend your final paper instead of written exams.
It’s been really neat to take classes with people form other countries because everyone brings their own unique perspective to the table. As far as travel goes, I’m going to start using the weekends to explore different parts of the city. And then we get a fall break in October, and I hope to maybe see some more of the Danish countryside and cross the bridge over into Sweden! We’ll see!
I miss you too! 😀 😀
hihi:-)) glad I am not the only one who is confused by the signs in Danish only.. 🙂 I’m still asking people “what does this say? what should I actually do if… ?” lol, I even went to the laundry room once with my Danish-Czech dictionary, and yes, I had to dry some of my clothes in my room as I didn’t want to set the tumble-dryer on for 30min..
Hey, Iveta, thanks for your comment! I am about to do the laundry again this weekend and I’m getting my room ready to hang clothes, lol. I will also be sure to take a dictionary with me to the laundry room! Hope you’re doing well!!