Our love/hate relationship with appliances...

First off, before I even let you read on, let me just tell you that I am really appreciative of our appliances.  Seriously.  It's nice to come to the apartment and it's about as westernized as you are going to find in West Africa.  We love our appliances.  For real.  But there are just times when when you laugh about phrases spoken in relation to the appliances.  We wanted to share some of those with you here.


From least ridiculous to most ridiculous.

First up: the water filter.

Gone are the days of water directly out of the fridge or sink for that matter. Who knows what tiny microrganisms lie waiting to destroy us.  So this beast cranks out clean water.  We just have to pour it in there ever day or so.  Do not underestimate it's power.  When we stayed with the host family, they had one and the top layer of water before it was filterered was BROWN.  It came out clear at the bottom.  And we drank it with no sickness to show.  So mad props to the water filter!

Here is our water heater.  To save electricity money, we unplug and plug in the water heater (sometimes).  I'm thankful for hot water! (Now that it's getting cooler it is nice to have.)  I was on the phone with a friend one night and asked Amanda if she could "plug in the shower."  That's a sentence I've never said before :)

The dishwasher! Bahahahaha...

The oven and the thermometer.  And can everyone see the tiny hole in the middle where you stick a match in?  First, you turn the gas on.  Stick the lit match into the gas encased oven.  Turn knob and wait for fire to spread out over the bottom.  Tons of fun.  LOVE doing this every time! :)


Last but not least, who of you gets to say that every time you do a load of laundry, you get to hold the washing machine in place?  We do! :)  You can wash about 3 pieces of clothing at a time and when it gets to the spin cycle, it seriously sounds like a rocket about to blast off into outer space.  We don't want our washing machine zooming into outer space (or across the bathroom floor) so we hold it in place.  Sometimes it takes more than one person.  This time in the video below it was pretty calm.  (Sorry, it is sideways...)