Our New (4-month old) Apartment

Here are some pictures of our new apartment.  Scott was tired of working and living within 5 minutes walking distance so we moved one subway stop away to the university-student-filled Wudaokou.  Given the location, for the same rent we were paying (roughly $1000/mo) we had to get something smaller, but that's okay because it's only the two of us.  When we were looking for our apartments, we came across a few two-bedrooms that somehow managed to squeeze 6-8 people in it.

Anyway, back to our apartment.  It's a two bedroom, one bathroom maybe 800(?) square feet.  Aside from the location, my favorite thing about our new place is the kitchen because it's part of the apartment and insulated from the outside elements, so this winter I wasn't cooking in a 50 degree kitchen.  One thing I'm still trying to work out is our hot water.  One day it works great and another not so much.  I'm not sure if it's because our water heater isn't working or I'm not patient enough.

Sarah enjoyed the hard bed otherwise she can vouch that our couch is quite comfortable in case anyone wants to drop by.  =)

Update on our old place: There was a fire in the floor below the one we lived on.  From what we can see on the outside of the building, the fire wouldn't have gotten our place but we definitely would've had some major smoke.

Front entrance that goes into our dining room; kitchen on right.  The kitchen has sliding glass doors around it, which I don't know what to use for.

Living room that you see when you walk in through the front door.  The area between the yellow curtains is like a sun room that looks into the complex's central courtyard.

Bathroom that has also serves as our laundry room.  So in the left corner when you walk into the bathroom there's our washer/dryer, in the next corner is a shower with a Jerry-rigged shower curtain, next to that is the toilet, and in the right corner as you enter the bathroom is the sink.  This is more like a typical Chinese bathroom.

Master bedroom - the picture is a bit strange because I used a stitching software to piece the pictures I took, but I people can get the basic idea. 

Guest Bedroom / Scott's office.  Scott's computer set-up (one desktop and two laptops) is at the foot of this bed. 

Spring is Here (and halfway over)!

I can't believe winter has already come and went and I've been doing such a "wonderful" job keeping this blog up-to-date.  Oh well…. real quickly on what has happened these last couple months in the 'Jing:

Chinese New Year was relatively low-key for us.  No fireworks blowing up at us like last year.  We had a relatively successful batch of jiaozi thanks to the cooking class I took and lots of fireworks to keep us awake at night.  Our new apartment faces into a courtyard so all the fireworks were amplified as they echoed between the buildings.  They're always cool to watch though and since our new apartment is on the 12th floor, the fireworks exploded right in front of our living room window.  As tradition we went to one of the city's many temple fairs.  I posted some pictures of what we saw.  We went to a smaller temple fair this year so it wasn't as crowded and plus it had a stage for some performances.

Our first snow finally came on February 10th, much later than the November snow we had in 2009.  I took the opportunity to go to the Summer Palace and take some pictures.  There's something beautiful about bright red buildings covered with snow.  It was during the week so I was surprised with the number of other people that were there but like me, they all had their cameras and snapped away.  The coolest part about the Summer Palace was the lake was completely frozen.  Despite the signs that said don't go on the lake, I did, and walked straight across.  There were many other Chinese people on the lake so I figured if I fell through, someone could rescue me.   

For Valentine's Day, Scott got me the biggest bouquet of roses I've ever seen with almost 100 stems.  The flower delivery service he used has their people deliver their in clown outfits.  When I first heard the doorbell I ignored it figuring it was someone trying to sell me something.  But after a few more knocks, I looked out the door and there was the clown!  100 roses is pretty heavy so I wonder how many the poor clown had to deliver that day.  In true Chinese style they make their deliveries on bike.  We saw a couple of them when we went out that night.

So that was pretty much our winter.  I've been staying in doors working on my lesson plans and Scott has been busy with work. 

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Sidenote: I had this story written up and intended to post it three weeks ago!  But since then we've had Scott's sister Sarah visit us so I'm now just putting this up.  I have pictures of Sarah's stay that I'll post soon as well as pictures of our new apartment…