view of the living room
Ok, I've been back for a little over one week and so much has happened that my head is still reeling. The biggest thing being...

Craig and I found an apartment!

After searching for a month last semester, it figures that we'd call our housing agent the morning after we land in Beijing, see two apartments, and end up putting a deposit for one all in a single day.

We're in a complex called Furunjiayuan 富润家园 which is a 5-10 minute walk away from school. We're living waaay up on the 23rd floor and have a great view of the courtyard below and of the surrounding area. That is, when it's not smoggy. The apartment is really nice, albeit decorated in what we've termed "asian granny style", and most importantly has a great kitchen. And I get my own room. So good riddance to kimchi-eating-endless-korean-soap-opera-watching roomate!

Here are pictures of my lovely home.

Our landlady is also the cutest thing ever - a tiny (she is shorter than me) and incredibly nice 40 something year old chinese lady. We went with her to the local police station this afternoon to get registered as Beijing residents so we're now official and not just illegally squatting.

Beijing apartment oddities: utilities. Instead of paying the gas/electricity/water company each month, you prepurchase units of each utility. Say for electricity, you get a little plastic smartcard which to take to a bank where you give it to the teller with the money for the amount of units you want to purchase. We just did this the other day and bought 100 kuai of electricity. Same thing with gas. It's very convenient but you do need to keep an eye on the meter because it would suck to suddenly have no gas when you want to cook or have no electricity for the aircon on a sweltering summer day.

We also have a water dispenser (like the ones you see in receptions and waiting rooms) which is a really common thing to have since you can't drink Beijing tap water. You can call a number and someone will deliver a bottle to your apartment - and you can specify a particular brand of water. We've long concluded that Nestle 雀巢 water tastes best.

After a couple of trips to Ikea and Carrefour to stock up on food and miscellaneous household items, the nest has been feathered and we've settled in quite nicely.