Cleaning house

It’s so encouraging that my friends and family at home are reading my blog! Please send any suggestions about what you want to know about my China adventure and I’ll give you all the details I can!

I’d like to dedicate this post to the million of brain cells I lost while cleaning my apartment this weekend. Moving into a new place in China has been no easy task, and now my body is paying the price. First it was actually getting the apartment, lately it has been getting it beautified... Next it’ll be finding a roommate... But I digress.

I’m sure the very nice guard who sits and always waves at me as I come and go from the building must think I’m crazy. Here is the only “laowai” (Chinese slang word for foreigners, literally means old foreign person) in the entire complex who, over the last four days, has done nothing but come and go with copious amounts of suitcases, juggle armfuls of shopping bags and even a had delivery from Ikea (yes, Ikea had to deliver my “mattress pad,” which I’m pretty sure is meant to just be a mattress by itself but has saved from the the wooden box with springs that is the “bed” that came with the apartment.). But after about five trips to the “grocery store,” think of a Super Wal-Mart in a shopping mall setting, and two trips to Ikea I think I’m settled.

But don’t think shopping has been the only thing I’ve been doing. I know my old roommates will appreciate this when I say that the old digs at 1118 had nothing on how much cleaning I had to endure this weekend. I’m not exaggerating when I say I don’t think the apartment had seen a cleaning rag in at least a year. I’ll spare most of the details and just share this: the kitchen alone took about 5 hours of cleaning and used up an entire bottle of “Mr. Clean” (China’s version of 409, which I’m sure is pure bleach in a bottle).

Nonetheless, Sunday night I collapsed on the couch, my arms sore from walking the 10 minutes back to my apartment with about 20 pounds worth of goods five different times over the weekend. I cooked my first meal in China, some frozen dumplings, with my new Ikea cookware and sat down to enjoy a movie (a very foreigner thing to do in China) only to realize my TV’s color toning is completely messed up and the remote for the DVD player doesn’t work. The first issue to take up with my landlady... It’s always something, right?