The Move to Our Apartment

The view from our door. We are as "on campus" as it gets!

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Carrie:  So clearly Jesse is the funny writer, but I am the one that provides you with those essential updates you're craving. At least, I think you want them. We only have like eight RealTravel "friends" at this point so we don't know if many people are reading this. Anyways, here's a shout out for the friends and family who liked us enough to put up with email updates from this website. :-) Holla!

We were finally moved to our apartment on Sunday the 2nd in the late afternoon. We were a little intoxicated so the banter as we packed up our hotel room was pretty funny. We were so excited to have our own place and looking forward to getting settled before classes started on Monday. We got there and - surprise! - it didn't appear that anything had been done all week, other than bringing in a wardrobe (which I was very grateful for) and putting a wire across our bathroom ceiling to hang laundry (which we couldn't use since the washing machine was still in a box). The first thing that I notice - there is no shower. This is a problem. It is hot and humid here and we get gross quickly. And Jesse hadn't showered since the day before. The bathroom also lacks a mirror, TP holder, soap holder, towel rack, and anything else a civilized person might find useful other than a toilet and a sink. The living and office areas have no furniture other than one desk and 2 wooden chairs. The refridgerator is in a box and there is no water in the bottled water dispenser. There is a VCD player but no TV. The sheets are damp and smell like someone else's stale B.O. We were actually better off at the hotel.

After we take in the situation, Miss Liang gives us our class schedules, maps to find the classrooms (we go from room to room and the kids stay in one place with the same  classmates all day), English textbooks, and notebooks. We explain the urgency of the shower and washing machine (Jesse has zero clean shirts and has already worn many of his twice) and are assured that workers will come tomorrow. They don't. No one shows up and we are going bonkers. We finally get ahold of Peter and get him to come see us at the apartment so we can present him with two pages of very reasonable requests. Now, we know that even without these requests being filled we are still living better than a large number of Chinese people (and American people as well). But we signed a contract that detailed that we would be provided with a TV, 24-hour hot water, etc, and being an illiterate  foreigner is stressful enough without them. I need to be comfortable in my own home. And I'm not. So I do what I can for my mental health by spending a couple hundred yuan on household items and getting unpacked. I thought that we had gotten a queen sheet set but it turned out to be one flat sheet that was too small. The two pillows in one bag turned out to be one giant body pillow. All we could do was laugh.

Today (Tuesday) some workers finally showed up. I had to go to my first class all smelly but by lunch break I was able to take a shower. It was a trickle but at least it was warm. I wish we could get some photos up but still no computers or internet at the apartment, we will be relying on the internet bar for a while. They installed a small water heater and a shower head on our bathroom wall. The drain is in the floor across the room so it seems that the floor will always be wet. There is no tub, no shower door or curtain. You have to remember to keep the toilet lid down because otherwise the seat will get wet. It's obviously very different for us but it seems to not be unusual for China.

We get the feeling that getting through our list of requests will be a slow process. It is very frusterating but there's really nothing we can do about it. The people that we talk to directly, Peter and Miss Liang, are very nice but very busy. They want to help us but many things are out of their control, like when the internet will be fixed for the school and when the plumbers show up. To be fair, we are living at one end of a 4 story building of classrooms. As far as I can tell, we have the only rooms in the building with water and with a need for so many electrical outlets. It's easy to get crabby and say that we hate China but we are still very glad that we came. It is a true test of our patience!