Day 4: April 26th

I woke up around 4:30 AM, which sounds early, but we fell asleep around 6 or 7 PM, so not so bad. Jessica was also awake around the same time, so we watched Chinese infomercials for a while. Those things are impressive. I'm going to try and record some before I go back to Canada. I don't know how they can make such claims! One infomercial claimed by shining a light on you (their product), you'd get whiter (a common want in China). It was just a crappy light that changed colours!

Anyway, the day's true beginning was when Alex showed up around 7 or 8 with breakfast. Fresh fruit for all, and some kind of bread with sugar cooked right into the hollow inside of the bread. It was fantastic. Afterwards, we headed to Hylite and borrowed their Internet until we figured out when and what we were doing.

We finally went house hunting today, if it can be called that. Alma still wasn't in, but they sent us with two translators. Justin and Katie. Justin was cool, and had a fun accent, because he lived in New Zealand for 4 or 5 years, so despite being Chinese, his English had a very bizarre twist to it unlike other Chinese accents. Katie was a small Chinese girl who didn't spend so much time translating as she did haggling for us. It was funny, and she came off as adorable to me.

Justin had a hard time keeping up with the landlady, real estate agent, and Katie all wheeling and dealing at the same time, a mile a minute, but he did his best. The girls argued about everything that didn't matter, and ignored the important stuff. A good example is they spent maybe 15-20 minutes arguing about who was going to provide us with pillows (when we just wanted to buy our own), but the lease itself got no attention. What was finally decided at the end of the discussion was that the school would sign the apartment for a year (since 3 month leases are near impossible), and we'd pay rent for the first 3 months. We paid 1000 yuan deposit (about half the rent for a month), and would pay the other half (900 yuan) plus three months rent tomorrow, when we could get all the money put together. For some reason, in China, they want rent paid in three month installments, which sucks.

We moved in, and spent the day cleaning everything. The place was filthy. We asked the landlady if she'd be cleaning it before we moved in, and she replied "Why would I? It's clean." The place clearly hadn't been lived in for years, and we finally had an admission later that her relatives lived here for a while. No tenants as far as the eye could see. Cleaning took forever, and I made my second stupid purchase of the trip. I bought what I thought was bar soap, but turned out to be a bar of detergent for getting stubborn stains out of clothing before washing it. Oh well. Once again, Chinese characters get the best of me. We tried to go out that night, but ended up just having one drink at Blue Bar, and going home for a 9:30 bed time. Jet lag hasn't released us yet.