Our Apartment

After getting married, Heather and I moved into our first apartment.  Here it is in all its beauty:

If you look closely you can see that the left arm of our couch is missing.  In China you are not allowed to remove ANY of the furniture, appliances, etc. from the apartments without paying for it in the end.  A few things are falling apart, but once I can get my hands on a drill and some screws everything will be right as rain.  Also, notice the blue/gold/yellow curtains...their ugliness cannot be truly seen unless in person.  But hey, they do their job.

Yes, that is every man's dream:  a refrigerator in the living room.  Our kitchen is so small that we have elected to keep our cold food within arm's reach.  The poster on the right is a map of YuanMingYuan (The Old Summer Palace) where Heather and I got married.

Before moving in, many people were asking us, "When do you want us to come over and help paint the walls?"  We didn't truly understand why until we saw the blue and orange with our own eyes.  The flash on my camera added a white haze to these pics, so it's more difficult to see the colors in all their horrendousness (yep, I made up a word).

This is our water machine.  Every home in China needs one because the water from the tap here is unsafe to drink.  In order to get more water you have to call the local water guy, who only speaks Chinese.  So when we need water I'll call the guy up and say, "Wo men yao shui," which simply means, "We want water."  Then I attempt to pronounce our building and room number and he comes with a full jug.  Also, in China you drink hot water, not cold water, so the pink spout gets used far more often than the blue one.

This shelf was made by our friend, Jon.  It displays our Great Wall candy dish, a wedding photo, our Twin Lotus Bowls (see earlier post for more info), our awesome chess set from Heather's sister, Karen, and a cool/cheap Chinese hat I bought at the Forbidden City.  (It also now displays a 3D wood puzzle of the Temple of Heaven that I plan on showing in a later post.)  All of that is accented by our mounted moose hat I bought in Alaska this summer.

This is our kitchen.  We have yet to use the stove.  That electrical looking box above the sink is the box that controls our hot water for the kitchen sink and the shower.  Yes, that is an electrical cord running down the left side of the sink in the top picture.

This is our wondrous bathroom.  See that little garbage can next to the toilet?  Yep, that holds used toilet paper.  In China, you don't flush your used toilet paper because the pipes can't handle it or something.  I went out and bought a covered garbage can for obvious reasons.  

And yes, that is our shower head hanging from the light fixture and taped to the wall.  Our whole bathroom is our shower, so the floor is wet for a while after showering.  

And that little blue shelf holding our contact solution and toothpaste/brushes is actually a kitchen knife holder I found at Walmart.  The reason you see it in both on the wall and on top of the toilet is because the hooks that hold it up lose their stickiness (because of the showering thing) and we have to buy more hooks.

Here is our bedroom.  The curtains, as you can see, look much nicer because we got them as a gift (plus they're Vikings purple, so Heather really loves them :) ).  That back door leads out to our very own little porch....which we have yet to clean because it is outright filthy from Beijing dirt and dust.

So, that's where we're livin'.  Pretty nice digs for our first apartment, huh?