New Apartment

1/2/06
It is very early on Jan 2, thanks to time change. I haven’t actually gotten internet connection in my apartment yet, so this is sitting in a word document. My apartment. I moved in yesterday. A man who spoke no English picked me up from my hotel yesterday morning and drove me and my stuff over. We had a pleasant conversation. He told me about his parents and that he was from Beijing and that I didn’t look like an American because I didn’t have blond hair or blue eyes, that I looked more Chinese. He told me that it would take me 10 minutes by foot to walk from my apartment to my school (something which I later proved wrong. Maybe I’m just a slow walker). I told him I had studied Chinese for 3 months and that yes, I was American along with both my parents and that my parents are in America now, also that I’m staying in China for 5 months and I intend to go traveling after my education ends. Not having used any Chinese in a really long time, I was quite impressed with my conversational abilities. He pointed out my school as we drove and told me which room in which building and then after that it was up to me to pay attention to where we drove so that I could get back. And then we arrived at my apartment complex.

It is huge. Both my apartment and the complex that it is in. There are areas A and B and C as far as I can tell, each which about 8 huge buildings as well as buildings for other things, like parking structures, little stores, a huge gym/spa/restaurant area. The buildings aren’t squished together either, but there are paths and trees and rock formations and little lakes everywhere so it feels more like you are in a park as you walk around. It would be almost pleasant if it weren’t the dead of winter and people were out and about. The apartments are really nice, as far as I can tell. Very clean, marble floors in the hall way, three elevators. It seems as nice or nicer than the apartment building that the program house is in. My apartment is huge, it might even be bigger than the house that I stayed in with my home-stay family – which really puts things into perspective. Might also feel huge because there is barely any furniture in and a lot of white, open space. The necessity of having an entire apartment to myself escapes me – all of my stuff fits quite comfortably into my room. I didn’t actually request an apartment – world link messed up my residence request, ran out of rooms, and had to give me an apartment for the same price as a student residence room. But private apartment is a residence option and I’m sure some people take it – but why?? I feel very small in my apartment. There are two bedrooms, one of which doesn’t have any sheets on the bed. That has become a storage room for my big backpack, sleeping bag, and thermarest, but that stuff could easily fit into the top shelf of my closet. I have a huge living room with only a small couch and a TV – abnormally far away from each other and nothing in between to fill the space. The kitchen is nicely sized and has most everything I need, save for hand towels and dish soap, and an oven for that matter, but I’ve never seen an oven in a Chinese home. I even have a separate room off of the kitchen for laundry, complete with a washer and an area to hang my clothes up. The bathroom is really nice, complete with shower, toilet, and sink. Unfortunately, it smells like ass and with no windows, there is no good way to vent it. I won’t be spending much time in there.

I am enjoying my personal space and freedom. No one forces food down my throat at meals and no one wonders why I go to bed at 9:00 PM or gets annoyed when I get up again at 4:30 AM. But between the personal space and the western amenities all around me, from western toilets to western stores, it isn’t a very Chinese experience. In many ways, this is all that I had hoped for from the home-stay a few months ago. I couldn’t wait to stop living out of a backpack, to be able to spread my stuff out a little more, stop washing my clothes out by hand, and have a place and room to call my own. That didn’t exactly pan out and I spend the first day in a very bad mood, especially after I found out that all my friends were placed in much richer house holds and they all had their own rooms and a maid to do their laundry. In retrospect, the experience was much more real. What percent of Chinese families are that rich? What do you learn from handing a maid all your dirty clothes and being able to hide in your room when China doesn’t suit you? But I guess what I have to remember is that this isn’t necessarily about a true Chinese experience – it’s about learning Chinese in the best city in the world to do it so that I can have the experiences later.