Aching for a Spin Cycle

By Andrea Mooney
July 20 2008

Travel,  food,  retail therapy, and control: these\ are a few of my favorite things. Unfortunately, the latter seems to denote the other three quite a bit.

As a self-proclaimed control freak, I’m the kind of person that makes to-do lists for a good time. I feel better when all my laundry is done, my room is immaculate, and I’m speaking in proper grammar. Call it what you want, but whatever its title, it's just not working for me in China.

 Beyond the culture shock we’ve all been prepped on, my biggest obstacle here has been submission of control. I can’t control feeling unsafe, disliking the food, not being able to communicate, or even complete daily tasks that would be so simple at home. 

In Boston, I have no problem throwing on my sneakers and iPod and going for an hour-long jog at ten o’clock at night. Here, I find someone to walk me across campus. I feel unsafe not because of any external presence, but purely because if something were to happen, I would have no way of communicating that there was an emergency. I lack the savvy to get myself where I needed to be.  Beyond screaming and flailing, I couldn’t relate my conflict to any non-Englis-speaking person.

In a culinary mecca, I’m sneaking off to Donata’s ordering a “Precious Gem” or a “Pasture Feeling” pizza, because I know I can’t control whether or not I get chicken feet when I order chicken, or be unloaded from the tour bus into a restaurant where the food has already been ordered for me.

In adventures of washing and drying in the 9th floor machine (that beeps Jingle Bells, by the way), my clothes were filled with Tide’s blue antibacterial dots, leaving navy marks all over my completely soaked wardrobe. Aching for a spin cycle and a way to rid my white skirt of its newly acquired blue polka dots, I tried the machine upstairs to no avail, and then again on the 8th floor only to find out that it was broken. Becoming far more emotionally involved with my laundry than I have ever been, I resorted to turning on the shower in my already swamp-like bathroom, and literally washing every article by hand. At home, my towels would have smelled Mountain Fresh in about an hour and a half. Instead, they’re still dripping 24 hours later.

Not wanting to force enlightenment out of five paragraphs, I won’t pretend that now I have a good laugh over all of my frustrations. Instead, I’ll just look forward to convenience, and appreciate the inconvenience that challenges me to throw my to-do list out the window.