Our First Apartment

It's true, I did give him a hair cut... but it's not too bad. Just looks like he stepped out of the 70's/80's with a chili-bowl shag. It's just beautiful.

*Johnny wanted to go back and add some comments. They're in yellow.

Speaking of, I owe you people some photos... sorry for the delay. Our electricity was out for a while because they were doing construction of one of the apartments near us. Oh China.

Oh China is right.

As Jonathan mentioned, we found an apartment and moved in on our one-month anniversary. As we discovered, it's not so easy finding a "clean" (Chinese clean and Western/American clean are two totally different concepts) apartment here in Kunming, especially if you're staying for less than 6 months. But, we were up for the challenge and found a brand new apartment close to downtown and not too far from the University. Between the time we arrived in China and moved in to our apartment, we stayed with one of Jonathan's friends, Pamela, who is American but has been studying in Kunming for about a year (he met her last year in Kunming because they studied at the same private school). She is extremely generous and has helped us with everything... getting bus passes, signing up for classes, showing us good places to eat, and of course, providing us with a place to stay before we found our apartment. More about her later.

So, here is our apartment... 13 floors up with an incredible view.

This is the view when you walk into our apartment. What you see is the living room/dining room out to the balcony. This is where we watch all of our DVD's that cost us 50 cents a copy:

Next comes the kitchen (to the right of the living room)... what you see here is everything, minus the refrigerator. When you look through the blue blinds, you can see our neighbors across the hallway - a cute little old lady married to a cute little old man. She is always in her kitchen cooking and it always smells delicious. I've named them Mr. and Mrs. Rogers because they just seem so friendly.

Here is our bedroom. Notice the lovely rose curtains they put up for us. So romantic.

If you want to talk about romance then know the mattress matches the curtains and to the right, not in the picture, is an invigorating shiny black and white wardrobe that looks like it may have come back from the future.

The following picture might be my favorite thing in the whole apartment. It's the light fixture for the study/nursery... the Chinese LOVE silly things like this. Even the lights in the living room have a red and blue disco light option that blink on and off. Everything is very (cheap) modern these days and based on entertainment, although you can still find the old, sophisticated chinese apartments with wood trimmings and carvings. Those are just stunning but hard to come by, as they are tearing all of the old stuff down...

Sorry, this is sideways, but it's the study/nursery. you can see the monkey tail hanging down.

Last but not least is the bathroom... this is a very westernized Chinese bathroom and is a delicacy over here.

There is no separate stall for the shower, it just goes to a drain, it doubles as and really is urinal. It pays to be rich.... or just a westerner in China. The western toilet (the 'sit-down' toilet that we are used to) is such a beautiful thing considering what the norm is for potties. Typically, everywhere in China has "squat toilets," or so they're called. I included a picture below of a decent one for those who are curious. It's disgusting.

And to end on a good note, here are some views from our balcony. That Suning electronics shop across the street (second picture) loves to blare Backstreet Boys' "Quit Playing Games with My Heart," and Celine Dion over and over. Hours of operation are 8am to 10pm. They are obsessed with American music (including rap), and therefore, it brings flocks of people into the store. I don't get it, but I'm not Chinese.

I think the intersection from the view deserved a little more attention. Like most third world countries, China is immune to traffic lights and any system of reasonable driving rules. That said, it's a real pleasure to go on our balcony and see two buses stopped head-on in the middle of the intersection with cross traffic piling up on either side while bikes and scooters filter through the larger vehicles like water through rocks, and all of that for no apparent reason save utter disregard for thought and regulation.

I've seen two cars face off in the intersection at two in the morning when there wasn't another car on the road. They simply sat in the intersection honking at each other. I felt like it was a big mess and apparently they did as well.

Zai Jan. More coming soon.