D - In the Home Stretch

Wow, it's been awhile, but I promise we haven't been taken to prison or anything. The easy part of my schedule is over now and I am in the midst of the final push to the end of the semester. It's currently week 14 of 17 at DMU, so we're moving closer to our return to the US (which we are rather excited about).

The new apartment is good. If you're curious to see what it looks like, check out our photo album. Try to ignore the handsome fellow wearing long johns to keep warm. In reality though, we are plenty warm now. Turns out our air conditioners are also heat pumps that can warm the place up. And obviously our internet is working now. It's odd, we have much bigger apartment in China that we did when living in New Jersey. Of course everything here has the tinny quality you come to expect in China. You look at the faucet fixtures and they look pretty normal, but you touch them and something is just off. The handle is loose, the silver finish flecks off, it feels like it's going to break. This is the way for most things in China that are not carefully purchased. Everything has an overwhelming cheapness.

I want to relate an interesting story about the move. The FAO indicated that some student volunteers and movers would show up Saturday at 10am. They did and the moving was quite efficient. Within two hours we were pretty much moved to our new place. The method of moving surprised me a little bit. If you've seen a picture of our refrigerator in the photo album, you know it's not a full American style fridge, but neither is it a dormitory fridge. It's a sizable and heavy piece of equipment. Well the Chinese movers handled it as follows. One man stands in front of the fridge and pulls it on to his back. One of the the others helps him push it fully on to his back. AND THEN HE CARRIES IT ON HIS BACK DOWN FOUR FLIGHTS OF STAIRS. Likewise, when arriving at the new building, again he carries it on his back up 5 flights. I might add that we're not talking about Yao Ming here. This is a 5 foot 7 Chinese guy that can't weigh more than 145 lbs. They also carried our TV and our washing machine in this manner. To be honest, my heart was a little sick. A few days of that could ruin your back forever, and they probably do it every single day.

When the moving was over for the day, the movers had taken care of two foreign teacher apartments. The moving crew included 4 underlings and a boss. How much were they paid for their trouble? 160 Yuan, about $20 for the 5 of them. How ridiculously cheap. And I am quite sure they are happy to have the job - how many other able bodied Chinese men would take their position? Let's say that they make 30 Yuan per day in their moving job. That's only 900 Yuan per month, less than I take out from the ATM at one time.

I have one other new apartment anecdote for this post. Unlike our old apartment, our washing machine will not be in our bathroom. Every 2 floors they have a designated laundry room. The rooms have the requisite equipment - namely pipes to supply water and drains to accept the waste water. Unfortunately our Chinese friends made a critical error when designing the laundry room. The drains were elevated! The Chinese washing machines have a hose that you lay down on the floor to release the waste water. This means for the machine to effectively drain, the drain must be (at highest) on the ground level with the machine, and preferably at a lower level than the washer. But in our new laundry room it was the opposite. Luckily, they finally figured this out and put a BRICKS and MORTAR ledge in the laundry room, which they are then covering with tile. When placed on the new ledge, the machines should be able to drain properly. But why was the room so poorly designed to start with?