Settling In

We've now been here a week and a half. I can't say we're settled but we're making progress.

We arrived 6 (large!) suitcase, 4 (large!) carry ons and 3 (anyone who read this before I caught my mistake and fixed it must have thought we were totally nuts to bring 6 cats!) cats intact. My husband's colleague met us at the airport with a 15 passenger van plenty larger enough for us and our mountain of luggage (cats traveled separately courtesy of the service). We were greeted at our compound (yes...I meant compound) by a welcoming party of many (I was too tired to count). Porters appeared and whisked our bags away, the manager, real estate agent and I have no idea who else showed us to our apartment. We proceeded on an interminable tour of the 2600 square feet to count that we in fact had 6 plates, 4 bath towels, 1 black trash can, 1 large ashtray, 1 medium ashtray, 3 small ashtrays, etc., etc. As far as I can tell, we did. I'm not sure what all the other people standing around were for.

By the time everyone left it was nearing 8 PM and we'd been traveling for something approximating three days (we started Mon. AM in Los Angeles and arrived Wed. PM in Beijing). We were thrilled to discover in the rather vague information packet we received that room service is among the amenities available at our hotel (oops! apartment). Menus, apparently, are not among the amentities. Nevertheless, my husband succeeded in ordering something which appeared ten minutes later, tasted ok and cost a lot (relatively speaking).

Bright and early (i.e. 7 AM!!!) the next morning my husband's colleague reappeared to shepherd us to the Embassy (rather a longer commute than we expected) where I was deposited in Starbucks with the colleague's wife while my husband and his colleague went off to "super-secret" (aka "wives not welcome") briefings somewhere. I got a tour of the parts of the Embassy I'll have access to (the post office, cashier, etc.). We stopped by the clinic where we learned that air purifiers and humidifiers are a definite must (a few days of experience without taught us they weren't kidding) and that the Embassy provides coupons for free drinking water (not that water's expensive, but there are some definite benefits to being quasi embassy employees).

After a long day at the Embassy we stumbled home to a mountain of suitcases and an empty fridge. The staff (virtually all of whom seem to be trainees) directed us to a nearby street to find a supermarket and restaurants. The supermarket is sketchy and we had mediocre and overpriced food at the only restaurant in sight.

A week and half later we have only two suitcases left to unpack. We've located a much nicer supermarket a long-ish walk or short-ish busride away. We've acquired Chinese cell phones (a must-have), gotten the shots we didn't get before came, schlepped back and forth to the Embassy any number of times, acquired hangers, then more hangers (our large 3 bedroom apartment came furnished with 8 hanges total...a few short of enough!), figured out how to work the washing machine (but not the drier), bought a very high-tech air purifier/humidifier (I woke up unable to breathe every morning until we started using it), and, finally, today hired an ayi (maid) who, if all goes according to plan will do most household chores (except the heavy cleaning which our hotel...um, apartment, provides twice a week) including shopping and cooking.

Today we also had our first amazing local experience but that's a story for next time.

Signing off from Beijing...