jINhua: The Apartment

This is Jinhua from my balcony. In the bottom right corner there is a new Library being built. The great part about this is, sometimes they do construction all night, and they have the most amazing guard dog who seems to only bark, just when you are really hoping to fall asleep. On a good day you can see those beautiful mountains. Most days they are covered and we are unable to see them, but when they peak through they are awesome. I've travelled across the world to find a little piece of my mountain town.

This is the view from my window in my living room. It looks out onto the Foreign Language School. Just another part of the Jinhua No.1 School. The students run every morning at 6:30am. I have learned to close my window before I go to bed! You can also see the beautiful river running through campus. Although I am not exactly sure what is in the river, and I try not to think about it too much, I am glad that we have a little bit of nature surrounding this "small" city.

The apartment is pretty darn awesome. I have lots of room for all of my shoes ;). It is probably one of the biggest places I have lived over the past couple of years! From tent's to bunkeys to CMH hotel rooms, this one definitely is more than I expected. I love my little home, and with the addition of some plants from "The Plant Market" I am really starting to settle in.

This was probably one of my most favourite purchases! This case costs 45RMB, which equals about 8 dollars. The best part is, when you return the bottles, the cost then goes down to 35RMB for the case of beer. What? The case is so heavy it is hard to bring up the stairs? Oh, "the man" will bring them to your door for you, leave you a fresh case and pick up the empties. Now that is service. The winter season brings some new flavours and I'm excited to try them when they are available.

I feel pretty happy about having some Western amenities. Not having to use the squat toilet all of the time is pretty great, and the shower stall is awesome. When Kyra lived here, the washroom was just one big room that often flooded, and from what I heard there were some mold problems. We are lucky they re-did this space.

This is outside of my apartment. I didn't have much use for the kitchen table inside, so we've moved it to "The Patio". This is where I drink my very valuable coffee and have some good conversations. I also get to look out on the mountains from here when we can see them.