Nearing the One Month Mark

We're into week four and it's been a weird couple of days. I won't go into details, but it turns out our funky Chinese apartment is not funky and Chinese, it's simply shoddy, cheap, and lazy. We held our tongues for the first few weeks because we didn't know any better, but a friend invited us up to see her place for comparison (different building in the complex, different landlord), and we are being charged a little more money for a little more space, buy WAY WAY WAY lower quality of everything. I was willing to put up with some of the quirks since I assumed it was just the Chinese cultural norm, but it turns out it's just lazy crap. We're a little upset.

So, cut to Wednesday of last week, when we wrote a point by point email to the School of Music assistant who has been busting her butt getting everyone settled (Poor girl). We toured a smaller place (2 bedrooms) in a different building of our same complex on Saturday and met the landlord. He's young, energetic, very accommodating, and the apartment will be fixed up for us as soon as his parents move out in September. It's a little smaller than we were hoping (well, it's a really great size, we were just really hoping that we'd find a perfect place with plenty of room to grow so we could stay longer than just a year) and a little more pricey than we really wanted to pay, but it's very nice, tidy, and we won't have to shell out for a crap ton of furniture.

I have no pictures. I didn't want to be rude. But, imagine a perfectly nice apartment with a good sofa and a great view. We'll move in September. Whooooopie!

Other disappointments: the realization that the quoted price from a pet relocation company doesn't include my critters' airfare, bumping the total up to around $4,000 USD. Ouch. The realization that a bigger percentage is being taken out of Rob's wages for tax than we were really expecting. Which makes saving for bringing the critters over a whole lot harder. The realization that the digital recorder that Rob needs to record source sound material for his electronic music compositions is way more expensive over here than in the states. I could go on, but it's depressing.

The big-time good stuff: most of the new faculty members are arriving and everyone is seriously great. We've hosted card game nights two Sunday evenings in a row, which has been incredibly entertaining. Several family-style meals to get to know everyone. Eating ourselves silly, but walking over 3 km pretty easily just getting from our place to the bus and from the bus to wherever we're eating, so we aren't packing on the pounds yet. Exploring some of the more famous parts of town. We have good days and some bad days, but I think most of that will pass once we get into a routine and get a few paychecks into our account, which will alleviate most of my cause for worry and bad days. It's all uphill from here! 

Exploring Pingjiang Road with Lucas (who we've really enjoyed getting to know and wander around the city with)

Binglin Library at Soochow University's Dushu Lake Campus. Until the School of Music building is completed next year, administration and some of the classes will be housed here. Pretty cool building, huh?

We've had so much good food, it's ridiculous. And most of it is really inexpensive.

Dangfanzhimen Fountain light and laser show. Holy Chinese Experience, Batman.

One of our many big group meals. I love it.