Well it isn’t quite 221B Baker Street, in fact it is better. It is home. To be honest, we still don’t have our address memorized and I would need someone to translate the lease agreement if I was going to tell you where it is. The truth about our apartment, however, is that it is quite an amazing first place of our own. It has not come into our hands without some bugs (surprisingly not literal bugs, but figurative ones… though I think I have seen a fly or two, and maybe a few arachnids). When we went house hunting, we went to a few agencies looking at apartments. Some were ok, and others were not so ok. But that first day we heard about an apartment that we would have to come back the next day to see. It was a first floor apartment with four bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and sunroom. It also had a small square fenced in area with room around it to plant a small garden. This my dear friends, this is what we now call home.
It was an unfurnished apartment. Aside from the couple of bed frames which had questionably smelling material on the headboards, there was not a piece of furniture to be found. Brother Dom, and those here were very kind, however, and donated enough furniture for us not just to get started but to be comfortable living in our new apartment. As I wrote in the last blog, getting the furniture here was not without difficulty. We hired a moving truck, which is not to be compared with renting a U-haul. No, instead two small men showed up with an intent to bang, dent, and scrape every piece of furniture we desired to move. This, of course, is an over exaggeration. But it was bad enough that I had to ride in the back of the moving truck for one of the trips to protect the precious refrigerator doors, and the round glass table top. The distance from the school to our apartment may be a little over a mile, but really a great distance for us to enjoy our scooter!
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| The Workers realize the fridge won't fit out the gate. |
Once we had signed the lease for the house, we realized a couple of things. One was that there was not a spicket in the wash room to hook up a washing machine (which was generously donated). Instead there was a spot in the wall that may or may not have contained a water pipe that may or may not have been connected to water. Well sometimes you just overlook that kind of… (cue power going out in the entire apartment) Hmm… We all looked around at each other with a puzzled sort of expression. Had we turned on too many lights? Was this apartment built to have only two lights on at a time? Was there a little gremlin in our breaker box that would continue to flip the switch off? Turns out there was just a short in one of the switches and when it was turned on it kept us safe by shutting the power off. (Which I think we are all grateful for.) These problems were fixed pretty quickly by the land lord’s friend, and a worker he brought with him.
The next adventure we had was with the internet. When we went to China Telecom, we got one phone and one internet plan. This was great except there was no one at our house setting up the internet. Freya, the secretary for the school, is a native mandarin speaker from northeast China. She has been so helpful in translating things for us, and speaking to people about what is going on. This may be the hardest part of being in China is not being able to contact anyone. The first time the worker came, he spent a lot of time in the box on the wall, then outside, then back inside, then gone for a few minutes. Eventually he let us know that he would have to come back another day because he didn’t have what he needed for the job (p.s. this is pretty typical for workers like this here, though not a blanket sweep trait).
When he did return, he had the wire that he needed and was raring to go! I soon found he was too raring, and not enough thinking. I had been letting him do his thing when I realized that he was throwing the wire through our window down from the second story stair case. This was not going to work. I showed him how this affected the ability of our window to close. He replied, “Oh…” he then got out a screw driver to see if he could work his way around our window frame. Now, there is not centralized heating so if he could have done this it would not have been the end of the world. The problem that I was having was that the room that the window was in was not the room that the internet was going to be in. I asked him in handmotionenglish how he was going to get the wire to the modem. He replied with a smile, shrug, and head wag in an “I don’t know, and I don’t know how to say I don’t know in english.” type way. So I walked him into the living room, opened the box, and showed him a pvc pipe that led up into the wall. He said, “No… no…” So I said, “I come up with you.” Now, I can’t tell you why I change the grammar in my sentences when I try to speak english to non-english speakers. Perhaps it just comes naturally? But I did find myself speaking in broken english with my new internet friend as we got to the second floor. The box up there had many wires, and many pvc pipes. I told him, “One of these goes to apartment.” He put his hands on his head and did that inhaling hiss that means, “Yes, but I don’t want to pick the wrong one and end up messing up someone else’s wires.” So I replied, “I go down and wiggle wire.” (Hand motions for wiggling wire.) “Oh, ya ya ya.” was the reply I received. So after wiggling the wire, I then went back up and helped him to push the wire down by unfolding it as we pushed it down. Eventually the internet was hooked up and the worker had given me his number for if I had anymore problems that he could help me with. He really was a nice guy, and I may ask for his help in the future even just to get to know him more.
When we got the router for wi-fi, everything was in Mandarin. I tried to set it up, but could not figure it out. It so happens, however, that a man here that that is near to my age was one whom I slept across the hall from in the dorms at college. We didn’t really have any other connection, and he is a native to China. He and his wife have been a huge help to Jewel and I. He came over and set up my wi-fi in a jiffy, and gave us a program that we can use to learn mandarin. They also bought an oven for us, which we just recently have opened and started to use. (Ovens are not as common here as most things are made in a wok or other pans.)
In conclusion, our apartment is a HUGE blessing. It is only about 400 US dollars a month for our beautiful new home. Here are some random pictures, and Jewel will also soon be posting apartment pictures on her facebook (she’s been waiting a while for me to write a blog about the apartment so she can. Shalom!
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