First week in Suzhou

We’re here!

It’s our 11^th day in Suzhou and, all things considered, we are doing really well! We're mini-documenting each day through Instagram, check Rob and I out at @katebmcclure and @robertwmcclure!

The good:

• Two markets less than 500 meters from the side gate of our complex
• Received great help signing up for SIM cards and data plans, utilities, and buying household basics (like a few bowls, a wok, knife, heating kettle, bedding, hangers).
• Successful trial and error in figuring out two bus lines to get someplace specific (with all signage in Chinese).
• Point and order meals.
• Dirt cheap veggies at the little market nearby (which we discovered is accessible by walking through a second set of doors inside the pharmacy). No joke, I’ve purchased a huge bag full of baby bok choy for $1.20.
• Using only my wok and hot pot, along with salt, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic, I’ve prepared several really tasty meals.
• Discovering WeChat. Getting in touch with our colleagues here in Suzhou and our friends and family in the States has been made waaaay easy. Look for the app and give it a try. You'll love it, I promise. Especially the Live Chat- it's like a walkie talkie. 
• $5.00 Season 8 How I Met Your Mother to keep us entertained.
• Meeting new colleagues, all of whom are young, energetic, adventurous, with greatly diverse interests. It’s going to be a really good group of peeps, I think.
• Small successes each day, like a shared laugh over our horrible Chinese and a cab driver’s limited English, or effectively communicating with a sales associate about the features of a floor sweeper, or finding a supermarket with Pedigree dog food and kitty crystal litter for when the critters arrive, and locating Q-tips and nail polish remover.

The bad:

• Average of 104 degree days (feels like 110), which makes getting out to see our new city on the cheap before our first paycheck dang near impossible because it's so hot. Walking to explore is simply not an option.
• Trouble unlocking our phones for the first few days. No worries- VPN and an online service did the trick, but feeling really helpless for the first 36 hours while our home internet was not yet set up and having no way to call the University administrators was really emotionally taxing.
• Rock hard Chinese-style mattress. Genuinely awful first two nights’ sleep before we found a mattress pad.
• Tiny, narrow, awful furniture. And I’m not saying that because I have an interior design background, I’m saying that because it’s truly the worst. We’re game-planning our September budget to include a Shanghai Ikea run and delivery charge.
• Dusty dusty dirty floors and furniture upon arrival. It’s a new building, so some of it was street grime, some of it was sanded plaster walls.

The Chinese:

• Water heater mounted on the kitchen wall, along with pipes running around the whole apartment near the ceiling.
• Snot rockets and lougies. Everywhere.
• Barbie pink flower decals affixed in a lovely and whimsical wave on our main living room wall.
• Tiny desks. Which Rob physically couldn’t fit his legs under.
• Beaurocratic paperwork to register for everything.
• No door frames or moulding- and unfinished paint jobs leading up to openings
• Cheese Lobster flavored potato chips, Honeydew Cantaloupe cookies, Chicken flavored cheetos. 
• Just like America, I'm pretty sure 15-25 year old girls are running the economy- an easy 70% of the shopping is for girly clothes shopping.
• Hang drying our washed clothes on these long trusses with mounted hangers that crank up and down on our outside utility patio. BTW, we did our own rough translation of knobs on the washer and did a darn good job of guessing what each setting meant- "Off the Ice" actually meant Spin Setting, but that was the only one truly lost in translation.