Laundry Quandary

Since I don't have a washing machine, and since I really don't want one in my very small bathroom, my directors decided to give me a small stipend each month so I can use the laundry service in my building for one load a week. Last week, I had no problems. I took my laundry downstairs before school and picked it up on my way home. They don’t have dryers, so I had to hang everything up in my apartment to dry, but that wasn't really a problem.

So yesterday I headed back downstairs with this week's load of dirty laundry. The women who helped me last week weren't there, but a man was there, so I figured he could help me. He looked confused, though. I pointed to my bag of dirty laundry and pointed to the washing machine. "Yogiyo," ("here") I said. He nodded and wrote down my apartment number.

When I returned that evening to retrieve my clothing, the man was gone, and the women from the previous week were back. They looked at me in utter confusion when I showed up and started glancing around for some sign of my clothes. None. "Clothes" I said, pinching my shirt to indicate what I was talking about. "Odiyeyo?" ("Where?") The women had no idea what I was talking about. Another customer was attempting to interpret for us, to no avail. Finally, I had the laundry women call my director, and I got the story from her.

It turns out that the man, who was only filling in while the women went to lunch, decided that the foreigner's clothes needed special care, and instead of throwing them in the washing machine, he sent them out to be dry cleaned. That might not have been such a problem if they had been my nice work and church clothes. However, this evening, I picked up the cleanest, most perfectly ironed blue jeans, t-shirts, pajamas, and bedsheets in all the world. I ended up having to pay over $30 to get my clothes back, which is more than my monthly laundry allowance. I was also told that they've recently stopped the wet laundry service and only process dry cleaning and do repairs now. So I guess that brings me back to my laundry quandary. Small things are easy enough to do by hand, but it's awfully inconvenient to wash blue jeans in the kitchen sink. No laundromats in Korea. No laundry service other than dry cleaning in my building. I'm really worried that someone's going to think that putting a washing machine in my bathroom is a good idea again!