ACK!
It's midnight and I have been asleep for 4 hours -- and I am now up!! Damn!
our day was SO long. we left the hotel at 9 am and returned at 6:30, went to happy hour, i had 2 gin and tonics, and fell DEAD asleep in my clothes.
brad never woke me when room service got here with dinner! all i can say is thankfully i was wearing my glasses and not my contacts!
when i got up, i ate cold room service that brad left out for me. i am now worried about food poisoning!! ;)
Everything went smoothly today though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We got checked in at the police department, checked in at the new house, checked in at the compound, checked in at the "clubhouse" gym...
Our air shipment arrived with our minimal supplies. Hope our sea shipment arrives mid-week, next week.
I made up our beds for tomorrow night, our first night in the house. Those matresses in the house sure are hard.
ROCK HARD.
The animals leave Los Angeles for Beijing at 9 pm, your time on Wednesday.... we managed to fedex our passports to the appropriate person today so the animals can clear customs on friday am.
Brad managed to go into the bank to convert the hongkong dollars in our chinese account (brad gets paid in hongkong) into Chinese money so he could go buy kilowatt hours (????) at the atm so that we can turn the airconditioning on at the house tomorrow. we were almost out of pre-paid electricity... and it was freakin hot in there!!
if none of that doesn't make much sense to you, welcome to my new crazy life!
Brad is having trouble getting the wireless to work in the house. I may be off line for a bit. He cannot figure out the right codes since they are all in chinese. he had to prepay for that serivce, too, at the atm.
you also buy gas, water, cell phone service...house phone, and something else at that atm. there is actually no banking at that atm though.... you must go to the bank for that.
We brought half our luggage to the new house this afternoon and will bring the other half thursday am when we check out. That's in 8hours. Hope i can get back to sleep soon.
I would call people but I can't make any noise--Brad and Lucas both are sleeping.
Thursday am we are taking the house elf (oh, i mean housekeeper) to the grocery with us so she can buy and choose cleaning supplies and staples in the kitchen. She is going to cook for us, vegetarian Seshuan. She'll pick the spices etc....Weird. But nice for us!
that kitchen is SMALL though. hardly any storage, and what there is, is strange.
Housekeeper is SUPER nice even though she does not speak a word of english. while we were meeting with the landlord, she "chaperoned" lucas in our compound. he skate boarded and she walked. lucas saw EVERYTHING! and now knows his way around the neighborhood better than we do. lucas said they spoke with sign language.
i was really proud of him for being so brave. he actually went skateboarding on his own at first, exploring the neighborhood, but it made the chinese people nervous ;) that's why ma-ayee (that's the housekeeper) walked with him....she just went along with him when he left for the second time.
we think it's funny how nervous it made our landlord. i wrote our house number on a piece of paper and lucas shoved it in his pocket and off he went!! we were impressed with his adventurous spirit. our landlord was HORRIFIED!! but really? what could happen. it's a gated community with guards! he couldn't get out! and there are no street names, just numbers on houses! he just had to follow the numbers if he got lost! he may act like an idiot sometimes, but he's no retard ;) and he was wearing his helmet....
i must say lucas was positive and well behaved all day and it was not a fun one. just tons of business.
I still really like the house and I think that our stuff is going to look good in it.
our meeting at school was moved from th. am to fri. am. who knows why! we have to be at school at 8:15 friday am for orientation and the meeting with lucas's teacher etc..
lucas's eyes nearly bugged out of his head when we passed the campus today. it is HUGE!!!!
i had forgotten how gi-normous it is!! it is so close to our house though that i still think it was our best choice. it is no further than the cinci house to the library. maybe closer?
lucas and brad may actually ride their bikes to school some ams.
thursday afternoon we are going to go to ikea. we made a list of things we need, but now i have forgotten it ;)
(things like baby gates to keep the dogs downstairs, towel racks--there are none in the bathrooms!, ummmmm....damn what else? oh, bed side lamps for reading. we have no lamps here at all.)
it is so strange that we have to arrange this with mr. Duan, our driver. we have no real spontanaeity...you have to call and wait and always give him a time...
brad's chinese pretty much sucks. (not really, just sort of)
he barely gets by, which is hard to understand since he was here for weeks.... but i do appreciate what he DOES know. ;)
i gotta start studying nOW.
like right now!!!!
ok. i think that's the update.
i can't wait until i am in the house and can call you all and not wake up the family.
my chinese cell phone has no voicemail and texting does not seem to be working yet.
i will deal with that next week.
as soon as my wireless is up ,i can call from the house for free!! YAY!
ok!!
see ya later!
love,
kimberly
BUT WAIT: there's more:
i forgot something re: the prepaid electricity that you buy at the non-atm atm with your atm card:
when you get to the machine, first you have to swipe your "electricity" atm card and then push a bunch of chinese buttons with your fingers crossed to load it with the KW hrs.
and then you swipe your bank card to pay.
first off, brad freaked out and thought he bought 10,000US$ worth of electricity!!!!!!!!!!!
but he didn't so it was ok.
and then...
then you have to go home and "load" the meter with that prepaid card (sort of like swiping a credit card but in your own home at your own electric meter). it took brad like an hour to figure that out!
and no one told us any of this!!
wtf??
what kind of commy-ass system it that?
There's still more:
i know! it's so funny!!
i am still laughing about it!
check this out: your meter is in a locked box underneath your mailbox out on the street.
no one told us that either.
it took half an hour to find!!!
and the whole time brad was gallivanting in the neighbor playing with the atm, it was about 100 degrees in the house and i was unpacking, sweating like a chinese steamed pork dumpling!
(very common snack food here by the way)
Much love,
kimbeijingerly
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