December 16, 2004

I have had some requests to see pictures of my apartment. So here goes!
I will start the tour from the grounds outside the building. There is a nice garden,rock wall and walkway area with some playground equipment for kids. I like the stand-up leg swing. It reminds me of my Gazelle exerciser that I sold just before moving all my belongings to Brantford. There are moon-ray type coloured lights that come on at dusk. The building that is 26 stories high is tucked in behind the main street and surrounded by other buildings. To see sky you have to look straight up. There is a new building being constructed behind us. The construction goes on day and night. At night the sky looks overcast with smog. I have only see stars once on a clear night.

The grounds and lobby are well-kept and always clean. Kim and her Tai Chi teacher have lessons outside four mornings a week. I may go down and do the Gazelle thing some mornings but that is only in the thinking stages right now!

The school owns two suites in the building. Each suite consists of two apartments. We have a security door with a doorbell that leads to a hallway inside with separate entrances to each apartment. So we have to unlock two doors to get in. We are on the second floor and they have put security bars on all the windows. So I feel totally safe.

My apartment is at the back of the building in an L wing. My bedroom window faces another part of the building so the view sucks. We don’t have a living room window so it is dark in there all the time. No sunlight to heat the place up. That will be a blessing in the summer but right now its cold most of the time. The living room consists of a wooden sofa and love seat with cushions, (that are not very comfortable for stretching out and watching a movie) coffee table and an entertainment centre. The TV comes with the apartment and the DVD player is Kim’s. Tucked in back are a dining table and two chairs. We rarely eat at home except for snacks and never use the table. There is a fish in the fishbowl somewhere.

The kitchen counters are so low I get a backache doing dishes. They are made for short Chinese people! The counters are granite and the whole apartment is tiled flooring which stays very cold. We have a small refrigerator and freezer, a hot/cold water dispenser and a propane burner for cooking. I have made ‘campfire’ toast on the propane burner. The washing machine is a spin/washer and no dryer so we hang everything up to dry on a rod that goes from wall to wall. Not pretty, but it gets the job done.

The bathroom is small and the whole room turns into the shower and gets everything wet. The sink only has cold water. At least we have a western style toilet and not a traditional Asian squat toilet. That's a whole other story.........toilets! There are four overhead heating lamps for warmth but we figure they must really suck up the electricity. They do, however, make for great light when “tweezing.” Only women can appreciate that!

Down the hall off the living room are the two bedrooms. Mine is the first one you come to. I have a desk and chair, nightstand, wardrobe and shelf unit and a double bed. When I arrived the room was clean and the bed was made up with a brand new duvet, sheets, pillow cases and pillows. The mattress is hard but that’s good for my back and it gets toasty warm under the duvet at night. I lie in bed at night and watch DVD movies on my laptop. I have a big window for light. When I am home I spend a lot of time in there working on my computer. My laptop and digital camera were good investments. I would be lost without them!

The walls are all a stark white but I have put up my pictures of the kids and some artwork they sent with me and now it feels a little more like home.

We have heating/ac units in our bedrooms. It’s a unique unit – heater and a/c in one. Only trouble is if you set the heat too high and lower the temp, the a/c kicks on. So you have to just turn it right off and let it cool down naturally. Electricity is expensive here, so we try to conserve. Our apartment and Heather & Jurgen’s next door are on the same breaker. The other night at the stroke of midnight the power went off. Apparently they had 3 heaters, television and two computers going and all the lights on. Then Heather went for a shower and turned on the overhead heating lamps in her bathroom. Wham! Overload!

Kim went down to tell the guards with a trusty little translation book in hand. She managed to find “power outage” and explain our situation. Within an hour it was back on. We can’t wait to see their bill as opposed to ours! The school pays the utilities and takes it off our cheques. Kim says ours should only be about 250 yuan each. That’s not too bad.

We have suffered many power outages in the past couple of weeks as the weather gets colder and more people are using their heaters. Sometimes it’s just our unit but more often it is the whole building and the whole block. It can get rather cold trying to wash or get dressed when it’s the same temperature inside as outside

So that’s the tour of my apartment. It has most of the comforts of home and we make-do with the rest. I am happy about the accommodations. It almost feels normal. I have my own space and I like that. I surely could have done a lot worse!

Silent blog readers (SBR’s) please come forward! I need to know you are out there! If no comment just post a “hello.” Hope to hear from you!