China Day 17 of 160 - Our Beijing Apartment

It is hard to believe that 10% of our China Adventure is over. We are finally settled into our new home. The jet lag is gone - we go to bed at 9 and are up by 6.

Here is a video of our apartment. Our 10th floor apartment faces south. We have several elevators.

The apartment had 2 bedrooms - 1 bathroom - a living room - a kitchen - and a laundry. We have AC and hot water radiator heat. The kitchen is well-equipped. We have a large television - hooked up to Apple TV and with our Slingbox we can watch TV from home.

Beijing is a city of 25 million people. It seems to go on forever. There is an excellent system of highways - buses - cabs - and subways. Bus rides are 15 cents. The rest of the country has high speed trains and plenty of cheap flights.

Lulu's first class is this Tuesday at 1 PM. She will teach 12 graduate students. She has a grad asst name - To. During the times between classes - she will give guest talks all over Asia. The first one will be in Japan in a couple weeks. We have three sets of guests coming to visit us starting with Jan Davis in early October.

You cannot drive in China without an International License. I never made an effort to get one. I am happy to take a plane - train - or bus.

The embassy told us that due to all the fast industrial development - the water is polluted. The pollution has mainly lead and other heavy metals. They say it is okay to bath in - and brush your teeth - but we rinse out with bottle water. We also cook and drink bottle water. At home - I laugh at people buying bottle water because Tallahassee water is some of the best in the world. But the last thing this old brain needs is a loss of brains cells due to lead.

We keep our political views to ourselves. We are guests and we know it. We are here to show goodwill and fellowship. Chinese are very nice people - and they have 5000 years of history to share. We are embracing and enjoying the differences.

I hope you like our apartment and how we decorated it.  We really appreciate what they did for us.