Welcome to our Home!

Come on in! The weather is cold and the wind is strong right now so this is the perfect time to stay indoors. I will take you on a tour of our quaint little home in China. We live in an apartment building on the north side of town. It is about a fifteen minute walk from the school we work at. Thankfully, there is a bus stop outside our apartment building that goes by the school (which will come in handy during the winter). Our place is on the second floor. This is very fortunate because there are no elevators and it goes up six floors. As you enter into our apartment you'll walk into our living room. The place came furnished with the chairs, a TV and a table. We are thankful for our seat cushions since most of the furniture is hard. In the corner is our heating and AC unit. We have full control of this one. Each room also has a heater in the wall (under the window in this picture) where heat will come from the city during the winter.

The office is the next picture. This is our command center where we are able to connect to the rest of the world. We have never been more thankful for the Internet! Our laptop has been our saving grace. It has been quite a useful tool as we have had to create our own supplies and teaching tools for our classes. The apartment came with a computer and printer, but we soon realized that the computer was incredibly old and as slow as molasses. So we decided to retire that computer and only use our laptop -thankfully the printer is in good shape.

Here you can see our bedroom. The bed is a little hard and the covers a little small (we're always fighting for the covers at night) but its cozy. We were nervous at first about the size of the bed. Our fears were subsided though when we saw that the bed was just long enough for Josh (we were afraid it wouldn't be since the Chinese people are so much shorter than him). From the bedroom you can walk out onto the porch. Its enclosed with windows and is where we hang our clothes to dry. This is also where our bunny stays when we are not home. He has definitely staked his claim on the place; thankfully he does not do that quite as much in the apartment.

Finally, this is a picture of our kitchen. We have a microwave, a gas burner, a fridge and just recently bought an oven (a little bigger than a toaster oven, its on the other side of the fridge unseen). So far it has worked well. The cupboards are extremely high though (that's right, they're above the fridge!). I can only reach the first shelf, which is completely confusing since I am the average Chinese person's height. We have no idea why they would put their cupboards so high up! We still have not found many of the spices that we are used to cooking with so we are trying to be creative. Its always an adventure going to the store. We'll pick up something that we think will be what we need and then just hope for the best. So far we have done pretty well. We at least found the salt, pepper and sugar!

Well, that is pretty much our place! There is an extra bedroom where we store our clothes and such. And we've already talked about the bathroom, which if you don't remember we have already posted pictures. One thing we do miss is carpet. I did not realize how much I loved carpet floors - and I'd take a vaccuum over a mop any day! Other than that this apartment is quite comfortable (although there are times we think of my dad's Lazy Boy and long to sit in that chair!).  Enjoy your warmer weather for us - we could use some over here!