Quick Update

Things are still going quite well here in Hangzhou. We have completed three Mandarin lessons (9 hours) and are able to carry a basic conversation. Getting the accent right is easily the hardest and most frustrating part. The fact that you can say one word and just by the tone in which you say it, that word can have four different meanings.

Ashlee and I made it out to see the West Lake (Xi Hu) today, it is what the city is famous for and it only took me four weeks to go see it. The weather was really nice, probably in the mid 60's. The Chinese like to make it difficult for us American's and use Celsius :). It does, however, seem to be permanently hazy here, and I am unsure if it is haze or if it is pollution.

The area around the lake is definitely the high rent district. When I got off the bus I saw an Audi R8 and the first store that we walked by was a Bentley dealership. During the course of our walk we also discovered the Rolls Royce dealership as well as the soon opening Lamborghini dealership.

We ended the day at a Starbucks that overlooks the lake. The Starbucks here in China make the ones in the United States look quite junky. They are all very large and have a ton of couches and most of them all have a huge patio.

I have also added some pictures of the dirty apartment we lived in, the link to the pictures can be found at the end of the post about the apartment. I am sure you all have been curious to see the 5 star accommodation :)

Feeling Quite Stupid

I had a 1.5 hour break from teaching today so I decided that I would take a walk around the area near the school and go look at a gym. On the way there I saw a Chinese man with two beautiful dogs: a black lab and a siberian husky. The man was giving the dogs all these commands in Chinese....

All I could think was woah these dogs know 100x more Chinese than I do which in turn made me feel quite stupid.

The good news is that we signed up for our Mandarin classes last night and will be starting them on Tuesday morning. We are going to be taking 6 hours of lessons a week so maybe after a few months I can understand more Chinese than the dogs.

New Apartment!!

The past week has been quite hectic as there is quite a bit of stuff to do to get registered in China when you are planning on staying for a year. Between those activities, teaching, and looking for apartments we have not had much free time.

We looked at close to 20 apartments over the past week. The first ones that we looked at were mostly studios and boy is a studio in China quite small. We then looked at a few one bedrooms, some where much better than others. A lot of them are quite small, much smaller than my one bedroom that I had in San Francisco. Mei took us to look at an apartment that was on the 27th floor, as you know Ashlee does not like elevators and I am not the biggest fan of heights. The apartment ended up being quite amazing. It faces south and has a nice view of the mountains around the city. Another plus of the apartment was that it had a large kitchen, the furniture in the apartment was quite nice, and it had a large balcony.

We looked at a couple more apartments after seeing the 2th floor one, but none seemed to fit what we wanted for some reason or another. We had Mei and another local logistic person talk with the owner of the 27th floor apartment owner to negotiate the rent. We ended up getting a decent amount of the monthly rent which was nice.

Signing the lease ended up being quite the adventure thought. It took a total 6 people to get the paperwork done (Ashlee, me, Mei, two other ladies from the school, and the owner). It was the first time I have signed a contract in which the only word I could read was my name and Ashlee's name. The good news was that Ashlee and I would be able to move in the same day.

After signing the contract Ashlee and I headed back to our old apartment to make the first trip in moving stuff over to the new place. Quick side note: all the taxis in Hangzhou change shift between 4 and 6pm and the drivers will only take you if you are going in the direction in which they need to go in order to turn their car in. Needless to say Ashlee and I were standing in the street at 4:30....After showing about 5 or so cab drivers the address we were trying to go to and having them drive off we finally found one that would take us and our ridiculously heavy luggage to our new place. The one suitcase i had was so large the cab driver couldn't even close his trunk...

Also all the cabs in Hangzhou have like white sheets over the seats. The drivers are super paronoid that you may get a speck of dirt on these white sheets, although they have cigarette burns and are all turn. So when you are attempting to load bags in the car the drivers look as though they are going to jump over the front seat to make sure you don't mess up the cloth.

At least trip one from the old place was complete and after the struggle to get a cab we decided to wait until tomorrow to try around two. Round two went much smoother as we made it to the curb at about 3:30 and were easily able to get a taxi.

I will try and get some pictures of the two apartments posted online in the next few days as we are awaiting having the internet installed.

New Apartment

Ashlee and I woke up this morning to meet Mei as she was going to help us move into our new apartment. For those of you that have been reading blog, you know that we have been living in the penthouse apartment with four other teachers from our school. This apartment is amazing and everything is brand new. Mei met us at the penthouse at ten am to help us cope with our excessive amount of baggage as I am sure you read about in the earlier posts. We of course needed two taxi’s to carry this large amount of baggage to our new place.

I took a cab by myself and the driver of course did not know exactly where the apartment was...which entailed the driver asking me to help clarify...which of course didn’t work as I don’t speak mandarin. After asking a few people on the street the driver was able to find the correct unit. I was always told not to judge a chinese property by the condition of the outside of the building. So as we pulled up to the building I kept my negative comments to myself. Ashlee and Mei arrived shortly after. We wrestled the the baggage into the building and each group took an elevator up to the 18th floor. For anyone that knows Ashlee, you know that if there is one thing she doesn't like, it would be elevators. We all survived the elevator ride and went to our apartment door. After unlocking the first door, which I think might have been taken out of a submarine (a huge steel door) we entered the apartment.

Our first glance into the apartment was not one of happiness but I guess you could say it was one of amazement. We were amazed at the DUMP that the school was saying was our apartment. The apartment enters into the living room which was composed of two leather couches, a coffee table that came with left over finger nail trimmers among other great gifts, and a rats nest/yard sale/cluster of cables which was the tv/dvd player/etc. The first thing we noticed was that out of the 10 or so light bulbs in the living room (the chinese love having tons of lights, each room tends to have like 6 light switches) only 2 of the bulbs worked. Welcome to the bat cave. We proceeded further into the apartment...the light situation was the same for the small dining room area and for the kitchen. We had a nice broken washing machine sitting in the corner, which we “were supposed to just ignore because it’s broken” and the new washing machine was put into the tiny bathroom. This presented its own unique problem as I cannot sit on the toilet as the washing machine takes up most of the bathroom.

The next rooms did not show any improvement. Both bedrooms contained old linens from the previous tenant (which we found out was not a model person). The kitchen was also quite a disappointment, the stove didn’t work and all the dishes were put back in the makeshift drawer but were not cleaned. The apartment on a whole was not clean at all. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched in months. Mei left Ashlee and I as she had to go to work. We didn’t even want to sit on anything as everything looked so dirty and disgusting. I called another student that used to live in the same building to see if this was “normal” for school provided housing. He assured us that, no, it was not normal for the apartment to be that dirty but the age of the apartment was nothing out of the norm. I the contacted the director of the schools for Hangzhou and I am sure she could hear the disappointment in my voice. She happened to be in the area and decided to come over and take a look at the apartment. She came in and made a few calls and told us that they would attempt to correct the problems. Two ladies from the school came over and began to check over the apartment. They started calling some maintenance people to come and check over some of the parts of the apartment. The attempted to fix the heater in the one bedroom but that was a lost cause. Heaters are quite necessary during this time of year in the city as it gets down to the low 30’s and the apartments in China have zero to no insulation.

Ashlee and I decided to get out of the apartment for a bit and went to the store with the director of the schools. We spent a bit of time shopping and staring at the weird things that were for sale in the store. (I will save that dicussion for a future blog post). We grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the apartment, by this time it was starting to get dark. And this is were the fun began with the apartment. The CRITTERS started coming out of the woodwork, literally I am not talking about a few critters here and there I am talking about several bugs that appeared all over the walls and the floors. The bugs include cockroaches, some type of little black bug, among others. Nothing like the bugs making an appearance to welcome Ashlee and I to China. After crunching bugs for a few hours we decided to go to dinner with some friends. Upon our return to the apartment the bugs were waiting up for us to make sure that we made it home ok! We contacted Mei the next morning and she came over with some Chinese bug spray, which I can only imagine is the strongest and made of the worst chemicals in the world. I turned into the Orkin man for about 30 minutes and sprayed the heck out of the apartment. Only time would tell if the spray worked, as Ashlee and I anxiously awaited the next night to see if our friends would be joining us. And join us they did, plan B, Mei gave us some cockroach pellets to put out.

Ashlee and I had had enough of the bugs by this time and put in a request to find our own housing. The apartment search would start ASAP. But for the time being it was going to be us and the bugs.

To check out some pictures go to: Old Apartment

Interesting Day - Chinese Medical Check

Today was quite the interesting day to say the least.  One of the requirements to live in China for an extended period of time is to go to the international health office and partake in the circus...I mean health inspection.

Ashlee and I met Mei at the office around 9:15 after a harrowing taxi cab ride through the city (which is much bigger than I ever thought it was) and started by filling out the appropriate form.  The form of course had its slew of weird English translations that always get a laugh.  After the form was completed and we paid the medical check fee we went to our first of 6 medical stations.

The first station was the blood test and urine test.  No joke.  The blood test involved walking up to a window in which you stick your arm through the window and a nurse takes your blood, no private room, nothing.  Me, being the brave soul that I am, does not like needles.  Mei was afraid that I would pass out so she informed the nurse and I was escorted into the nurse station and told to lounge on a sort of outdoor swimming pool chair.  So here I was laying in the middle of the little room where the nurses are taking blood and also putting peoples urine into viles.  I managed to survive the blood test portion and was allowed to proceed onto the urine test.

This was no urine test like in the united states.  They give you a dixie cup like thing that has no lid and point you over to the bathroom.  Once you are done you walk your un-covered cup back to the nurse and she dumps it into the vile.  This concluded the tests on the second floor and we were to now move up stairs.

The tests upstairs started with the ENT (ears, nose and throat).  Oddly enough the first part of this test was being weighed and then taking an eye test.  The interesting part about the eye test was that I was to tall and blocked the projection so I couldn't read the lower levels without constantly moving around.  This got a good laugh out of the nurse at least.  The nurse had a trick up her sleeve thought...she pulled out the color blind testing book.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I cannot pass one of these test to save my life.  Page one of the book she asks me what I see, I respond with "triangle", which instantly give the nurse a very confused look.  She goes "you see number?" In which I respond no "Triangle".  This back and forth of wrong answers goes on for several pages until she gives up with the color blind book.

There was then a blood pressure test which also included a nurse poking me in the stomach several times.  How blood pressure and my stomach are interlinked I have no idea.  I also had an EKG in which they attached wires to my legs, chest, and arms.  It is the closest I have ever felt to Frankenstein in my lifetime.

Probably the most random test though, was I had to have a ultrasound done.  No idea why this is included as a test for men but it was an experience I wont forget for a while.  The last and final test was an x-ray, which was pretty standard.

The thing you have to remember was that during all this the doors are open to all the exam rooms, so you have a bunch of random people watching you.  It really makes you miss the privacy that the medical profession gives you in the United States.

All in all it was an interesting day and one that I probably will never forget.