Latest on the apartment

Our contractor finished all of his work on Saturday! We are excited to move in today. Here are some updated pictures.

After discovering that the bed we had was too small for 2, we had to get a new bed.

Now the moose lights have been replaced for something more simple

The kitchen all finished. Oven, stove top, hood, cabinet doors, and shelves all installed.

Our new shower door was installed

I purchased this bookshelf for $6 for our office.

The next time we send pictures, it will be from the cleaned, decorated, and moved in version.

Lost in translation

Often times our language doesn't translate quite well into the language where we live. Therefore, many times I have to think in a little different English than what I would normally say in order to translate into the other language. I realized when literal translations are printed, the result is hilarious English. For example, today I had this conversation with my driver as he took me into the big city to run errands: "Do you want or not want to smoke tobacco?" "I don't want to." "Do you want or not want for me to smoke tobacco?" "I don't like smoking tobacco." "Ok, then when you get out of the car I will smoke tobacco. You Americans don't like smoking tobacco." (he makes this generalization based on the 6 Americans he has ever met, 3 of which he has spoken to.) "We Americans think that smoking tobacco is bad for your health." "Oh, ok. I am a hardcore tobacco smoker. Each day one pack. Each pack is 4 yuan. That is 4 yuan each day." (Awkward silence follows)

As I was pondering these translations, I realized that not only does the literal translation look funny when printed, but literally everywhere, these literal translations are indeed printed. When you first move here, it is hilarious, but after a while, you hardly even notice. However, once in a while, something grabs your eye and you have to laugh. That once in a while came yesterday, while unpacking boxes in our apartment with Shelley. I came across this coffee mug:

Now I don't drink coffee in the mornings. It makes me nervous and jittery, and apparently my thyroid already does that naturally without needing an additive. But this mug will stay in our apartment, and when I do sip on a hot beverage, this is what I will be drinking out of. What isn't pictured is the large print all around the mug "happy wildness men" and the picture of a man holding a gun shooting at what looks to be 2 goats and a devil. Afterall, there is no hood like manhood. Enjoy the for you to reading.

i think i'm gonna like this place

i'll admit it. i think jarred has had a much easier time settling in to life out in our new home than i have. things like ting shui (they just cut off the water in the entire neighborhood for an entire day) and trash houses (literally what they are instead of having trash cans outside) were just a little bit more outside my comfort zone. this place is different~ but after a couple weeks, i really do love it. i have learned where to buy milk. and a mop. and we are close to having a home. it is quiet out here, which i love and have never before experienced on this side of the world. and we get to interact with 2 very different worlds- the world of go-getter college students and rural, small town folk. it's nice. and there isn't tons of entertainment stuff to do, so when we are off, we are really off. and that's relaxing. and one of my absolute favorite things is this massive (albeit man-made) lake directly across the street from our apartment complex. and since they are just finishing it, there are hardly any other people there! it is the perfect place to go running or take a romantic stroll. yes, this place is different. really different. but i think i'm really going to like it.

Update on the Apartment

So the contractor showed up yesterday with a little van full of 6 light fixtures, 6 gallons of paint, 3 hand towel hangers, 1 toilet roll hanger (it was supposed to be 2 of each, but the tp hanger is just a smaller version of the hand towel hanger, so I think they got them confused. Now the guest bathroom has an unusually large tp hanger), 2 towel hangers, 2 shower heads, and 6 men. They went to work, and here is an update:

They brought the wrong light fixtures for the guest bathroom. The ones they brought were much larger more accessorized than the ones we picked (see picture below). Now our mirror looks like a moose in the springtime.

This is the kitchen light track

The porch fixture matches the wicker furniture

And the dining room fixture. Note also the brown that we chose for the dining room walls.

Stay posted. We'll update you on the progress as they fix it up.

our new scooter

our new form of transportation. it's pretty awesome.

yesterday

let's just say yesterday was quite the eventful day. i started the morning by unpacking the rest of the stuff i hadn't gotten to. only, to discover that multiple things were no longer in the condition in which we packed them. food coloring exploded all over the ziploc it was in and now our box of cocoa is all the colors of the rainbow. the tube in my face lotion bottle snapped in half spewing lotion all over its ziploc. and the grand finale was that one of the bottles of olive oil cooking spray i packed exploded as i was unpacking everything, ripped a hole in its ziploc, and went over everything in the pack. jarred's pack is still sitting in the bathroom to be washed thoroughly as rinsing it didn't do to much. chaos!
but the day got better when we went and bought our diandongche. we now own a big red moped! everything out here is super spread out because they are planning for the years ahead when population out here 20 times what it is now, so it just isn't feasible to walk or bike everywhere. i wasn't really keen on driving it at first, for good reason. i have had 1 moped driving experience in my life and it was bad. really bad. in thailand lots of people rent mopeds, so i naturally joined in and showed up at a place to do the same. as i went to try out the moped before renting it, i started going we'll say a little too quickly. when i tried to stop, i held the brake, but forgot to let go of the gas and as i drove across the little town street headed for the shops in front of me people went flying out of the way. although when i came to a stop no one was injured, the shop owner was yelling that there was no way he was going to rent me a moped.
but, last night i drove the moped and did pretty darn well if i do say so myself.

then last night we went on a scavenger hunt all around to learn our new town. one clue directed my team of 3 to find a woman over age 70 and give her the flowers that we had just picked up at this multi-acre flower market. after asking the ages of a couple women who looked as old as moses only to discover they were in their mid-sixties, we headed to the town square, certain to find a septuagenarian. as white people descended on their little town square that has probably never seen a foreigner, people began to gather immediately. we approached a few old women, also not 70. as we explained to the now huge group of people encircling us that we were playing a game and needed to find a woman over 70, one man shouted out "that man over there is 70." "no, we need a woman over 70." as everyone in the circle got the picture, people start looking everywhere as others started shouting at the top of their lungs "they need a 70-year-old woman! who is 70?! WHO IS 70?!" and thankfully (so that we could exit before a riot broke out), a man came running up with a woman (who i am pretty sure was blind) yelling "SHE IS 70! 71!" i think she liked her flowers.

Welcome Home

On the long plane ride across the globe, I was able to watch "The Hangover" for the first time. The movie was hilarious, but I didn't realize how much of a reality it would become for me. I had the whole experienced of getting slammed and waking up with a hangover the next day without ever going to Vegas or drinking alcohol. When we finally arrived in our city 28 hours after we started traveling, my vision was blurry, I slurred my speech, and I can't remember anything I did or said after we were picked up by Josh and Danielle. The next morning I woke up with a sore throat and a headache with no idea where I was. Welcome home, Jarred.

Once I got my bearings straight, we went to see our apartment for the first time. Holy smokes. It looked like an estate sale gone horribly wrong. Boxes and bags were all over the place, you couldn't walk into any of the rooms. We found half open bags of pasta and Fruit Loops. Our printer and scanner were wrapped and delivered in a sheet- just like the stork delivers babies from the cartoons, only ours was an HP all in one. To make matters worse, the windows were left open, and we left right across the street from a dirt mine, so there was a nice coat of dust on everything. Shelley's first purchase will be bleach, ammonia, gloves, a gas mask, and a power washer to clean all the stuff up. In the midst of all the mess, we love our apartment, and are so excited to get it moved in. We are so thankful for Josh and Danielle for picking it out for us, and to those who moved stuff in the midst of their busy schedules trying to move back to America.

Things are different in our neck of the woods than in America. One difference is that convenient stores are rare here. Instead, everything is divided into a market. If you want fruits and vegetables, you go to the fruit and vegetable market. If you want roast duck, you go to the meat market. If you want a used fire extinguisher, you go to the fire extinguisher market (they have one). Each of these markets consists of rows of store selling the same stuff for more or less the same price. So, to finish our apartment, we went to the interior decorating market. Going into this little shopping trip, we had 2 goals. Stay within the budget, and try to pick out counters, cabinets, etc... that might not be as nice as we would have in America, but would make a more comfortable environment for where we live. We soon realized that to accomplish the first, the second might not be able to happen because their ideas of aesthetically pleasing and valuable don't quite agree with ours. Lets just say Pottery Barn wouldn't do so hot here. For example, when we went to the light fixture store, we found that the more colorful, plastic, and accesorized with colorful plastic the fixture, the higher the price. In America, such fixture would be on a back shelf. Here, it is front and center, and expensive. A simple globe fixture like we prefer, very cheap. Granite countertops are some of the highest priced and most valuable in America. So, when our contractor took us to the granite countertop market, I asked him "Aren't there any other kinds of countertops we can look at?" He replied "you mean fake ones?" I said "yes, fake ones." He said "Yes, but they are much more expensive. They have more colors, and are fancier, and they take more time to install. I didn't think you would want to pay that much." Granite it is, for a grand total of $120 to top all of our kitchen counters.

Here are some pictures so you can follow the apartment as we finish it over the next 2 weeks.

The Master Bedroom

The Dining Room

The Living Room


The Kitchen


Our Balcony!

we're here!

after over 28 hours of travelling we are finally here! and surprisingly, i would have to say that this was the easiest trip across the world i have ever had. after spending days (well, weeks) packing up all of our stuff, we got it into 4 checked bags and 4 carry-ons. out of protest to united airlines for raising their overweight baggage fees from $50 a bag to $150 a bag, i refused to pack our bags to be forced to pay overage. but try packing all of your stuff into 200 lbs, it's not so easy. and packing as a married couple was totally different than when we both came single and i think we both were a little surprised by the priorities of the other when it came to things that needed to be packed. i'll try to take some pics as we unpack tomorrow to let you see a what we ended up bringing across the world. anyways, i think we got them all down to like 51 or 52 lbs (as low as possible) and hoped that the ticket counter in norfolk would just let it slide, and, amazingly, they didn't even weigh our bags! not in norfolk, not in country, not at all! this has never happened, so naturally we were pretty stoked. disappointing, however, was that jarred's 2 rainbow chip frostings were taken at security in va. he was pretty crushed, for like 5 min. i don't know why it didn't click that frosting is a liquid/gel. dang.

and despite jarred's threats that we would have our temperatures taken rectally as we entered the country, we got through just walking through a gate that took our temp automatically. interesting enough, however, once we got through immigration and picked up our bags, we saw the newest form of pandemic protection- "the quarrantine detection dog." i'm not sure using a cocker spaniel was the most intimidating choice of breeds, but he was cute. all in all, it only took us 30 min to go through the health scan, immigration, get our bags, go through customs, and get in line for to re-check our bags. that is def a record. we had a 6 hour layover in the capital airport before the final leg of our trip and there were a few notable modern advances that were quite enjoyable:
1. toilet paper in the bathrooms. and clean bathrooms, western, to note. so far, i have been in the country for multiple hours and have yet to use either a squattie or the toilet paper in my backpack. impressive, east asia.
2. free drinking water stations. while it looks a little different from a water fountain to have cups and a water tong in a little cubby near the bathrooms, it is a drastic improvement over having to buy bottled water everywhere you go.
3. free wifi in the whole airport. this is the kicker. america doesn't even have this. i started this post sitting in the airport and it made the forever-long layover a little bit better.

this place is like a whole new world from what we left 14 months ago. and that makes the next few weeks...months...years...seem like even more of an adventure. enjoy the stories...


ps- as of today we have been married 6 months. this is my plug for marriage bc it is wonderful, and for jarred, bc he is too. it is fun to start the next 6 months of our marriage on the other side of the world :)