The Apartment (Marcus)

It looked great in the photos! And in reality? It looked about what we expected..though upon further examination, therein we found a comedy of bad stuff.

My very first impression of the apartment was the temperature. Holy shit it was cold. Inside it were a whole bunch of Chinese people, rushing about doing stuff. The door and windows were wide open, letting the freezing cold air inside.

There was a hard wooden couch that’s almost too narrow to sit on comfortably, and two wooden lounge chairs of the same design. All devoid of cushions of course. There’s the kitchen with everything we expected – plus very dirty and a tap in there that has only one temperature – arctic.

There was a small dining table in the main room buried in things they had bought for us. A microwave, pots, pans, an electric wok, eating utensils, chopsticks, milk, tissues, toilet paper etc. The best were the glasses, branded by the school, Tian Yi glasses and soooo sooo dirty. Oh my god! They were feral! All boxed up, but I reckon sitting in someones attic for the last 20 years at least. I thoroughly washed one to get the..grit or whatever it was off them so we could at least drink from the water dispenser though Courtney had brought a collapsible travelers cup thing which worked great here too. And goddamnit I had one too but pulled it out and left it at mum’s house thinking, nah I wont need it.

The bathroom was small but functional. By day one we had already backed the toilet up because duh, you cant flush toilet paper over here can you? Use your imaginations on what you do with it. The shower was located in a bath and the handheld head attached to a hose was of course broken. When you turned it on, water sprayed out into the bathroom, which was lovely, believe me.

The bedroom was pretty nice actually, but like every other room, freezing. I don’t think any of the buildings around here have any insulation period. The bed surprisingly seems to be kingsized, and there is an air-conditioner mounted on the wall which is supposed to heat the place – but doesn’t work – colour me surprised! Despite being a king-sized bed, for the last three nights we’ve gone to bed fully clothed and clinging to each other, waiting for our body temperatures to heat it up. We only use the middle of the bed which is where we create our heat. I often wake up in the middle of the night sweating like a pig, in fact my brow last night was basically dripping with sweat from being in full tracksuit pants, t-shirt, polarfleece top, thick explorer socks, then polar fleece booty things over them, and Courtney likewise. So we then have to strip back down again, and well, to put it simply, it sucks total ass right now.

So since those early impressions, things are marginally better. The first night we were given one of those oil heater things(coil heater?) I don’t know what they’re called but it heats a small radius – takes a little bit of the chill from the air. We are waiting today to have a large air conditioner unit installed in the lounge room – this SHOULD fix things for us. I think once the place is nice and warm, we’ll be a lot happier as I swear to date, every night we’re almost on the verge of tears so utterly miserable. I have never been through harder times than this.

On top of all this, we’re basically out and about all day following people around. We feel like we have to make ourselves so enthusiastic and smiley that by the end of the day we are utterly exhausted.

One thing I want to make clear though is the people here so far have been super helpful and doing everything they can to make us comfortable. They don’t really understand our needs like we do, but they try nonetheless. Ever reliable Mr Pan cleared our toilet with the plunger he procured from this 1980’s looking communist stationary storeroom – all piled up on metal bunks not unlike you see in WW2 movie POW camps in good ol germany. So once that was signed for, we walked around the school, he took some photos of us around their various places of …honor? A giant golden apple, some waterfalls, and an urn thing – just call me Cultural Bob eh.

We made an attempt at cleaning the grotty benchtops and kitchen proper(well Courtney did) – whilst I gave the place a sweep etc etc. It is better. This morning we discovered the by putting the coil heater into the bathroom before showering made such a huge difference to the overall experience – I just wish the damned hot water would stay on – for me I get warm for a few seconds, then cool, then warm then cool – and it is just FREEZING in there. Courtney had a good one this morning, but I didn’t, I suspect the hot water is very limited. Oh and the shower was fixed yesterday as well, thank god.

We were taken to the local supermarket – think Bunnings, but containing furniture, clothing, food, you name it, and they bought for us a whole heap of things. Cushions for the couch, a shower curtain, food(cornflakes, woohoo!), vegetables, some bath towels and a bath mat – cleaning products etc. They said they’d buy all this initially as they wanted to make us comfortable – which was great. We need to go buy a new kettle – electric this time, as I melted the damned handles off the crappy one we were given initially on the stove.

Oh and on the outside of our building are big golden letters ‘Foreign Teachers Apartment’ – that makes it all better. But to be fair and in all seriousness, we probably get it a lot better than the other people who live on campus – god only knows what they have to put up with :)

So it slowly gets better – I am sure we’ll look back on this in a few months and laugh – if we’re not home already, goddamnit!

All I can say though is China is so so Chinese.