Will We Ever Figure Everything Out?

When we arrived to Belgium it took us about 2 hours to do our initial grocery shopping...you know, the basics like clothes detergent, food for a few meals, dishwasher detergent, etc. We were focusing on purchasing all the items we would need in the next 24 hours and then go from there. I can't count the number of times I referred to my English to French dictionary, however, we were quickly discovering grocery terminology was just not included in this book. So, we relied on product pictures like the clean sparkling glass on the box of dishwasher detergent. After getting "home" and washing dishes for a few days with this generic detergent (I bought the brand that was sold by the grocery store) I thought the dishes would never get clean. For some reason, in particular, the glasses the kids drank milk from were not getting clean, which baffled me. So every time we ate I needed to scrub the dishes down and then arrange them in the dishwasher? That's too much work, and what's the point in having a dishwasher if it doesn't work properly?
Surely the name brand stuff would be better, and it was...for a few more days. Then we added JetDry to the dishwasher after some friends described where to place it. (It's not in the same spot as in the US.) Now we had the name brand detergent and JetDry to make our glasses sparkle. We thought we were set! The dishes appeared clean for a week and then our glasses went from sparkle to...white film. A lot of white film...all over the glasses and the inside of the dishwasher...it was gross. Finally, K (don't know why we didn't think to do this from day 1) looked for the manual. What a great idea! The manuals we have stashed away in the garage are in about 5 different languages. Some in French, German, some other languages I don't even recognize, and a few in English. After reading up on the dishwasher, we discovered that the generic "sel" (salt) in French I had bought was not really detergent. I'm embarrassed to say that we were washing our dishes with salt for a whole week after we arrived. However, it does still go in the dishwasher and is needed to clean properly, but not to act as the actual detergent. I never had to add salt to my dishwasher in the states...so the moral to the story is: Always look for the manual and read the directions! Or, purchase a dictionary that has plenty of grocery store words! Or, don't rely on pictures!