Funny story.

So the other night at dinner my host mother abruptly stood up and walked into the kitchen, she then proceeded to bring out a pair of my boxers. My host mother (voluntarily) does my laundry (I couldn't tell her not to if I wanted to, my Chinese isn't that good). Anyways, she had been doing laundry that day and they have a washing machine in their apartment but no dryer, which fairly typical in Chinese homes apparently. So to dry the clothes they have a clothes line set up in the living room and they also hang some things out the windows. Of course I written about how cruddy the weather has been here, with all the rain. This makes drying clothes very difficult.

Soooooo, she appears with my boxers which don't appear to look quite right and then she holds them up and I can see that one whole leg is very singed. Apparently what I gathered through charades is that because it had been raining, and the clothes weren't drying she took my boxers into the kitchen and held them over the gas stove to speed up the drying process, she then dropped them and they caught on fire.

She seemed rather distressed about the situation, I thought it was pretty hilarious. She kept say "Wo dui bu qi, wo dui bu qi" (I'm sorry, I'm sorry) and I kept responding "meguanxi, meguanxi" (no big deal, no big deal).

Anyways I think it's pretty funny. These types of stories are definitely part of the home stay experience.

-AL