I woke up this morning and Michael met me in the office. We chatted for a while and then went out to eat breakfast–a plate full of dumplings . There were about 60 dumplings on the plate and we didn’t come close to finishing them.

We then took a taxi to my new apartment. The apartment is on the third floor of the building. From the outside, the building looks very unattractive and run down:

As we walked up the staircase, I felt as though we were entering a shack. Nothing looked good. The stairs were dirty cement. When we got to my door, I had a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, as though I was going to be living in a total dump:

When we opened the door, however, it was an entirely different story. The apartment was the exact opposite. Everything was clean and nice. There is a master bedroom on the right, the living room ahead and to the right which connects to a sun deck, a second bedroom ahead and to the left (in case anyone wants to visit), a kitchen and dining area on the far left, and a bathroom on the left (with a new washing machine).

The house is air conditioned and heated. There is a phone in the bedroom and DSL. The bedroom has two closets and a queen size bed. The bed is somewhat soft, and big enough for me.

Another view of the bedroom:

The bedroom is much bigger than it seems in the pictures.

The living room has a TV (with only 1 English channel), DVD player, sofa, two chairs, and a little table:

Looking back from the sun room at the living room:

Off the living room there is a little sun room where clothing can be hung out to dry:

The second bedroom is not yet complete. There is a bed but no mattress or bedding (sorry for the bad stitching….I combined two bad pictures to make a really bad picture):

The kitchen has a fridge, freezer, gas stove, tiny sink, and a water purifier that dispenses boiling hot water and cold water, and also contains a UV sterilizer (not quite sure what that does or why I would use it…..leave a comment if you know):

The bathroom is a bit funky. There are rusted exposed pipes everywhere. The shower shoots down on everything and there is a little drain hole at the bottom. In the upper right corner above the sink is a water heater. This isn’t the best spot as there is no space for a mirror, but I should be able to put a small shaving mirror there. The water comes out REALLY hot if you turn it up all the way, and there seems to be plenty of hot water. The toilet is right next to the sink and doesn’t flush very well. It is a western toilet which is nice, and you can put paper down it (thank god). The washer still needs to be hooked up:

After a little while, Aaron came over and we went to tour the city while Michael taught one of his other students. The first thing we saw was the store at the bottom of the apartment. They have drinks, beer, and basic stuff which should be pretty convenient. They were SHOCKED to see me and Aaron–two foreigners at the same time. While we were at the convenience store, two little girls came up and couldn’t help but stare at me and Aaron. Now this isn’t like catching someone looking at you. They were full on staring at us for like 5 minutes. I felt very odd.

We then went to 365-24, which I guess is the Chinese equivalent of 7-11. It is open 24 hours a day every day (as the name implies), and they sell all sorts of stuff from ice cream to toiletries to coffee. We then went to a 6 story shopping mall which was very interesting. The mall was made up of different sections (shoes, sportswear, appliances, etc.) but each section had individual vendors selling whatever items they wanted. This meant that you might see two shops next to each other selling the same item for different prices. On the top floor was a market and we wandered through it looking at the different items. You can just sample any of the fruit you want and they don’t mind. I had a fresh date which was very good. They also have this strange fetish of taping unrelated products to other ones as a way to entice consumers. They sometimes, however, don’t think about what would go well together. For example, beer and peanuts, chips and dip, etc. would be good combinations. You don’t see things like that here. For example, you might notice that your bottle of coke has a bar of soap attached to it, or that there is a packet of yogurt attached to your shampoo, or a whole sausage attached to a broom.

We then went to the food court which was….ummm….different. You had to buy tickets at a central window and then go around to each stall and exchange a ticket for what you wanted. They had the stuff I would expect (dumplings of every shape and variety, noodles, ala-carte “Chinese” items, etc.) and a lot of stuff I didn’t expect (lungs, hearts, meats of every kind on a stick, donkey, etc.). It was fun to walk around and see all the stuff that you could eat.

We then went to the electronics center. This was a HUGE 7 story building with every type of thing you could imagine. They had the same arrangement with individual stalls grouped by type of product sold. A lot of prices were comparable to US prices. All the video games / software / music / movies were DIRT cheap. The monitors and laptops were the same price. Cameras were expensive. iPods were about the same price as in the states. In general I found most things to be much cheaper than in the states with the exception of electronics. Every price seems to be negotiable, including those in department stores. The only non-negotiable place I have found is the market.

After the electronics store, we went to the DVD shop. Almost all of the DVDs were pirated and cost 10 Yuan (About $1 US Dollar). The real ones cost around 30 Yuan (about $4). Both the legal and pirated DVDs had normal cases and covers. There was a police man who followed us into the store and just kept staring at us as we talked. I was worried that we were in trouble or something, but Aaron reassured me that he was just curious about foreigners. A girl who must have been in middle school came up to us out of the blue and said “Welcome to China” and Aaron responded saying something in English that she didn’t understand, and then the same thing in Chinese which blew her away. Our last stop was the supermarket which was HUGE. Markets here are really more like super wal-marts than markets. They sold clothing, electronics, household items, etc. and even had a jumbo TV with 40 chairs for a crowd of people to just hang out in and watch the tube. How many markets have you been to in the states that have had movie screens and areas for patrons to lounge around and hang out at? We got some basic items for my apartment and headed home.

Michael than came by and we went to the vegetable market to get some food for my dinner. It basically consisted of him telling me the name of something in Chinese and me telling him weather or not I liked it (wo xihuan / wo bu xihuan). We spent about an hour going through the various vegetables, fruits, meats, and seafood while tasting and chatting. The fruit market was very different from similar things in the states. The aisles were VERY tiny and people went through them with bikes and carts that took up almost the whole width of the aisle. They of course had to ring the bells on their bikes every second for no reason. We then went to the normal supermarket (chaoshir) to get the stuff that we couldn’t find at the vegetable market.

Finally it was home for dinner and a little Sudoku. During the entire day, we were only able to spot 3 other white people. It was very odd. I got stares throughout the day and random people kept saying hello to me. It was not offensive, but it will just take some time to get used to.

Michael is coming tomorrow morning at 9am and we are going to try and get me a phone and a printer. Goodnight