Adventures in Guangzhou!

In my apartment back in Guangzhou, the washing machine does this thing where it will stop mid-cycle and you have to open it up, rearrange the clothes to be more evenly distributed, and then start it up again. Not a big deal, but it's always there. Our DVD player also doesn't like to work if it's at anything other than a perfect horizontal level. That takes a bit of balancing at times but it works out. Finally, to get hot water in the bathroom, not only do you need to have just taken a hot shower, but you also turn the faucet the opposite direction of every one I've ever used in the states. Again, nothing major, but quirks nonetheless.

One of the Yale-China apartments in Guangzhou has a weak power circuit so it's constantly a fun game to see how many appliances you can actually turn on before the fuse blows. It's impossible for two people to shower at the same time because the second you turn on both water heaters, you blow a fuse. In like manner, you can't have both bedroom air conditioners on while someone tries to shower. You'll blow a fuse. They also have a sink in the kitchen that sometimes decides to leak on the floor. Other times it's just fine. The bedrooms also only have one power outlet each. My favorite though is the television that takes about fifteen minutes to warm up before it will give you a clear picture.

In my friend's apartment in Kunming, there is a complicated system of circuit breakers that you need to flip on and turn in order to get hot water. And even when you do everything in the right order, it oftentimes doesn't work anyway because it's all related to solar power cells on the roof of the building. It's sort of an all or nothing proposition--either boiling hot or ice cold. In one of the PiA apartments in Wuhan the water shuts off from 11:30pm-6:00am. This is not a big deal except when you need to do some serious business in the bathroom and you can't flush. There's a bucket that can be filled and used to flush but if more than one person has to go, it can get ugly. What's funny is that even when the water is on, you need to manually hold down a button to fill up the tank to get enough water to flush anything other than a #1.

One of the PiA apartments in Hangzhou had this thing where the bathroom was so small that the shower faced directly towards the wooden door, about 4 ft away. You had to sort of angle yourself away from the door or else you got a small flood in the kitchen. So what ends up happening is that toilet gets soaked and if you need to sit down after a shower, it's a very cold experience for your rear end.

And even the few high class apartments I've been in tend to have small quirks as well. My friend Meggie in Guangzhou lived in a very expensive high rise located in a premier area of town. It was extremely nice inside but was hardly devoid of quirks. There was a toilet seat in the guest bathroom that liked to come unfastened when nudged in the wrong direction. There was a light fixture that was able to move up and down from the ceiling...except when it decided not to. The best though was the front door. In order to actually close and lock it, you had to pull up on the handle and then slam it with your shoulder. Otherwise it just bounced right back at you.

My apartment here in Beijing is no exception either. Though it can be classified in the category of "Unnecessarily Nice," it has a handful of quirks up there with any apartment I've seen thus far. The shower is a really nice feature of the bathroom, complete with a granite-like floor and glass shower door. The only problem is that eveytime I use it, it leaks out on to the floor. I've put a towel down on the floor to soak it up but what's weird is that I never know which side will get wet. Sometimes it's only the right corner. Other times, the left. And sometime, just sometimes, it's both. The air conditioner in my bedroom is also a bit weird in that it really only seems to have one setting. Most ACs in China have a digital remote in which you can move the temperature up and down. Everytime you change it, it beeps and adjusts accordingly. Well, mine beeps alright and registers the change on the remote, but I'm not convinced the temp every changes. However every once in a while it makes a really loud noise in the middle of the night and blows out a gust of cold air. At least it works.

The biggest quirk of my home here in Beijing is the kitchen light. Sometimes it just doesn't go on. I've cooked many a meal in the relative dark which makes me feel primaeval or something. So basically I leave the switch in the on setting and just hope that it comes on and stays on. Right now I'm in a period of "on" which is great. I feel like I should cook up a week's worth of meals for when it inevitably goes off inexplicably in the near future. Ah well--all part of the adventure.

Besides the various anomolies here, everything is going well. I've reached the halfway point of my language program and that's a little scary. I'd like to take stock and see how much I've learned but I still have no idea. I hit a bit of a wall this past week when I felt like my brain shut down a bit, but I suppose everyone goes through that at some point or other. Again, I have managed to get out a bit and even found myself at a Wesleyan alumni get-together last night which was great. And since I'm halfway done here, I figured it's time for some pics. Click on the link to see some shots from the Great Wall, the acrobats, the soccer match I went to, and some other random pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/awolfe03/sets/72157594214781834/