Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Shopping Adventures

Today I need to go couch shopping. The couches we had, besides being orange, were quite large for our small apartment and have been moved to a larger apartment where they will be recovered and enjoyed more fully. Buying anything is interesting in China as there are many additional steps to go through. As far as the couches, this is what I have done so far.

Step one--Ask another foreign staff member where to look and try to explain to the taxi driver where I need to go.

Step two--Wander aimlessly around where the taxi driver drops me off (hoping it's the right area of town--in this case it was. Yay!) Be followed by the salespeople, who are hoping to make a sale but intimidated by my inability to communicate.

Step three--Grow mildly frustrated with the selection and head home for the day.

Step four--Intimidated by steps two and three, put off looking for new couches for the next month.

Step five--Find out the current couches are being removed from your apartment that day and realize you've procrastinated too long.

Step six--Ask a Chinese staff where to look.

Step seven--Wait a week until you have time in your schedule to look again.

This, of course, brings me to today, which, after watching movies on the hard floor last night, has motivated me to take care of what I should have done a month ago. However, there are still a few steps to be done. I must find a couch that I like and will fit our apartment, then I must find a Chinese staff to return with me to negotiate a price and delivery. Hopefully I can accomplish the first of this part today.

On the note of our couches and apartment, I ran across some pictures last night of our apartment from when we first arrived. You'll see it's not bad, though a little old. We've replaced the curtains, which, although it's hard to tell from the pictures, were a nice 1970's muted orange fake velvet, and as mentioned above, we no longer have those couches. Hopefully that will help with the overall "orange" feel of our apartment. We're told the company is going to help us update the apartment a little. The kitchen shelves, which are over six feet off the ground, will be lowered and resurfaced. The moldy panel in the second bedroom hopefully will be removed. We might even be able to paint over the fake orange paneling that runs throughout. This album also includes a few other pics from when we first got here. Maybe this will work...
We just returned from a retreat this weekend, which was the first retreat I've had that had more relaxation time than sessions! It was a great experience with lots of time to relax and spend time with new friends. I also got to hold a sleeping baby the entire way home, which is one of the best things in the world. Overall it was a great weekend, and we're looking forward to the rest of the week off before classes resume Monday. Enjoy the pictures--you'll find them on the left of this page.

PS...Badger Nathan until he puts a post up on his blog about the "shortcut" he and several other bikers took to the retreat! :-)

2 comments:

rj said...

did you find one???

Anonymous said...

Funny how the seemingly most easy tasks in America can turn into epic journeys in SECONDS!

And, I'm not surprised you were able to find a baby over there to cuddle. Where there is a tiny baby, and there is Ruth, one can expect much cuddling.