Our Apartment

I've finally gotten around to taking a few pictures! They aren't very exciting I'm afraid - just my apartment, which suddenly looks very bare. But still those who read this are mostly family and I suspect you guys are interested in where we are living.



This is our living room from our entryway, so it is also the first image we see when we walk in. Yes it is a little unkept, and yes it is very bare. The couch is quite nice, very comfortable as is the chair, though it has suddenly became the place to throw all our random crap when we walk in the door. The little chair is being used as a stand these days. When we want to watch a DVD we throw the computer on the chair and watch from there. We have a television and stand on order, but it has yet to arrive. Sort of. You see we bought it from a guy who is moving to America, but he hasn't moved yet so he's still keeping the TV. And really we haven't actually paid for it yet, so we can't complain.

I do like the spaciousness of it, and the nice hard floors.



A shot of the living room from the other side. The door on the far left is our entry way. The next door over goes to the kitchen. The phone hanging on the wall isn't a real phone but one of those entryway phones that allows us to let people in from the downstairs door.




Here's our kitchen. Or at least the sink (it is difficult taking pictures inside a small room.) The kitchen is a bit small and greatly lacks in usable cabinet space. Pretty much all of the cabinets have some sort of plumbing or gas pipes in them making them mostly unusable. We're shopping for a nice shelving unit for all our stuff, and trying to make due until then.




The kitchen from the other side. Notice the lovely water bottle. China water is totally undrinkable so everyone orders the big bottles. It is fairly inexpensive so not too big a deal. Bethany ordered our first one as the water guys doesn't speak English, so I don't know what we'll do next time.




Sorry for the turned picture. I turned it right on my hard drive, but for some reason blogger turned it back and I'm too lazy to figure out why. I'm not sure how well you can tell, but the fridge is small. It comes to about my neck but is about half the width of an regular American fridge. The bottom part is a freezer.



Back to the living room. The door to the left goes into one bedroom which we're turning into a study. The door in the middle goes to the bathroom and on the right goes to our bedroom.



Our bedroom, from the door. The bed sits quite low to the ground, but is soft and comfortable. That's our little chest of drawers that we bought at Ikea. At the window, where all my clothes are piledis a nice shelf type space by the window. It is big and nice which partially explains why all my clothes are there. Sorry for the mess, but we're still trying to figure out what to do with everything with our limited storage space.



Bedroom from the other side. China pretty much doesn't do closets and that big wardrobe came with our apartment. They usually don't but whoever moved out probably didn't feel like moving the thing.




Our awful bathroom. It is small, but not terrible. However the tiling is uneven so that even through there is a drain in the floor when the water falls on the floor (and it inevitably does) it doesn't actually make it to the drain. The hot water works in two ways - scolding or freezing cold. We literally have to turn the sink water on hot in order to give us some semblance of a decent shower. Also the shower head sprays water everywhere so we get water all over.

It isn't ventilated well so everything stays damp. I've started opening the window to help, but mildew is creeping in. I hate it. Really I do.




Our sink and small little shelving unit. The sink makes this godawful noise when you use it.





The study. We had to move the dining room table in here to set up the internet. It is scattered and ugly, but I spend a lot of time in here these days. When we get paid we'll get to buying more things and it will look nice.



One of three air conditioning units. We have one in both bedrooms and one in the living room. They are kind of like window units but in the wall. They work fairly well for the room they are in, but strain to work on any other rooms. We tend to only run them when we are actually using that particular room and shut all the other doors. This keeps us pretty cool, and saves on some electricity.



That's supposed to be our air conditioner remote but you can't see it well. Sorry I'm really in know mood to mess with my finicky camera. These things are insane to figure out. Each of our three remotes are totally different and written in Chinese. Basically we press various buttons until it starts getting cooler.

And that's our apartment. I'll try to get some pictures of the living quarters and school soon.