Badass Beijing and the new apartment

Daylight savings time, who needs it? The sun rose this morning at 4:30AM.

My summer classes start on Monday. I'll be taking 4th year Chinese, which according to my Chinese roommate is “extremely hard.” Oh yeah, I've got a Chinese roommate because I recently moved off-campus. My program arranged the accommodation: I'm living 5 minutes from the classroom in a very dididaodao (authentic) apartment building.

The apartment is 15 stories and fairly nice. All of the tenants here would probably refer to themselves as laobaixing, “Old Hundred Names”- just average, working Chinese. My roommate is in his 20s- he looks after ACC's Internet. He's a friendly guy, and spends most of his time in his room playing FIFA, smoking, and listening to American pop music.

As for the new place's amenities, there are some charms and drawbacks. It got repainted a few weeks ago, so it looks nice and spiffy from the outside. And the inside is in good condition (although the pollution makes dusting almost futile). There's a common room with a TV, and a kitchen with a fridge. I've even got my own single bedroom.

There are some interesting quirks though. When the residents of neighboring apartments cook, I smell it. The hot-water heater for the shower requires an incomprehensible pattern of switched knobs and turned dials. Whenever I lock or unlock my door, I need to set the handle into a different position depending on whether I'm unlocking or locking, outside or inside.

I've also met a few little neighbors. I left my window open last night and woke up with 5 new mosquito friends on the ceiling. And just as I was writing this I killed my first cockroach!

Well, I'll miss living in my dorm room, whose door was about a 5 second walk from my classroom. But, I'm looking forward to 24-hour homework help from my Chinese roommate, as well as getting a feel for the real Chinese style of living.