pictures 1

Hey guys now that I've discovered I can attach pictures to these emails I'm sending to my blog (thanks Laura!) here's the first batch. I can only attach a few at a time so there will be a bunch of posts to start out with because I have several days of vacation to share but you'll get over the untidiness. 

The first picture (I think) is of my bedroom. It's about the size of the one I was just living in at home and has 2 twin beds (no mattresses, remember? and no box springs for that matter either. there's a nasty looking pad on it that does absolutely nothing so I'm really glad that I brought my ground pad. The old tenants left pieces of foam so I let my roommate (Melanie) have both of them.), a fan (the AC here), water cooler (yay for bottled water!!!!), a desk, mini fridge (that is still empty because we haven't yet found the time to go into town but we're getting pretty desperate so I'm thinking we'll make it either today or definitely by Friday), a coat stand (that we actually USE! I've never seen one that was more than decoration.), a nightstand-ish thing, and a wall with two small closets and shelves that are too high to actually use. We also have a little closed in porch where once we figure out how to do laundry and have the time to do laundry, we might actually use to hang clothes up to dry. Right now its just being used for storage space. 

The second picture is of our bathroom. It's the best smelling one on the whole hallway apparently because every time someone walks into our room they comment on how nice it smells. I walk into my room and think it smells like port-a-potty. Which it does. Along with most of China. I'm going to forget what its like to small good here because even if you rip a huge one right in the middle of the room no one ever notices because it already smells. Our bathroom is.. meh. We need to move the washing machine out to the porch (hopefully that is an option) because right now you kinda have to bend over it to take a shower. So far our wonderful toilet has always flushed unlike several on the hall that were clogged for a few days. There's hot water for 1-2.5 hour periods 4 times a day so you shower strategically. There's no actual shower space so you just kinda stand in the middle of the bathroom floor and make an attempt to get water on only half of the stuff in there. But there is warm water. Which is one of my favorite things in my life right now. Oh.. and the toilet paper doesn't flush. It's just like in Mexico (and many other countries I'm sure) where you throw the used paper into the trash instead. Which doesn't really help with the smell.

The third picture is.. um. Our closet wall? I can't actually remember anymore. You'll figure it out.

The last picture is of the cat hides that are hanging on the heater in our hallway. They're poorly done and probably smell weird and even though we got permission to throw them away no one has made it a priority yet. It was one of those things that grossed us out when we first got here but now we realize they're a totally normal part of China. So they stay.

I'll see if I can post a few more picture in a bit.