stepho&crank

Well, we have arrived. We are nearly settled in to our apartment now, have met our landlady and gone to the police station to get our official residency permits. We are living in a large apartment complex called Hua Qing Jia Yuan, in the northwest corner of Beijing (the University district). The apartment is nice, if quirky — a one bedroom with a living room that houses our fridge, in addition to some fantastically ugly pink Ikea curtains. Apparently baking is not a big thing in China because our kitchen does not have an oven, just a little two-burner stove, a non-functional water bubbler and the smallest washing machine I have ever encountered. But all those things that seemed very foreign at first are starting to feel increasingly familiar and like home.  

We also have had by now our first shopping excursions to the Lotus Shopping Center which is down the street on the corner of Chengfu Road. Here is a photo of what it was like.

Overabundance upon overabundance of soy sauce. It was hard to choose.

Below is our snail-mail address for the six months we will be in Beijing. We are also including the address in character form, because it looks cool (no need to include it on mail, however).