Our Apartment--Tracy

Hot chocolate, chicken pot pie and carrot cake. 
Our first meal in our new place.

Its official we now are in our apartment!  We are in the Chaoyang District, in the Central park complex, Tower 9, Floor 30.  We still don’t have our furniture shipment yet and won’t until the visa stuff is all worked out, but I am starting to buy some small thing to make the furnished apartment feel like home.  We did dash off to a type of "Costco" store, called Metro, to get some basic kitchen items.  But our first meal was still kind of like camping.  We also have a guest room with two beds about the size of a full bed.  So, there is room for guests!!!

This complex has 23 towers and is mostly occupied by international people.  When I am out and about I can hear, French, Russian, Spanish, and I think the other day I heard Swedish, or something close to it. The towers are in a circular shape with a park, walking paths and places for people to sit and visit.  When we are meeting someone we always use the yellow horse sign as a marker.

The ground floor of all the towers have various small shops;  grocery, cleaner’s, beauty shops, cafés, restaurants, two gyms, bakeries and others that I have yet to check out.  It is still really cold here and not a good time to be just wandering about.  I only dash out to grab what I need, or try to get a taxi if I need to go a long distance.  The subway entrance is about a five minute walk, but once you're there, it's all underground and warm!  With the way it is connected to underground malls, and if you plan your day out right, you really don’t have to go back above ground until you get back home.   



One of the small shops around my complex.



Trying to get a taxi to understand where you want to go is difficult sometimes.  Of course, I have the address in Chinese and a map, but they don’t use maps here and it just confuses them. They also don’t know where all the places are because of the amount of growth and development here.  It can be very frustrating!  I usually just call one of my friends from church who speaks Mandarin and have her tell the driver where to go (before I do).  



Night view from our apartment.



My friends have advised me to take my time because everything here is difficult.  And if I am able to accomplish one thing in a day, celebrate!  So, today I am heading out to the silk market to get a picture of the Hong Kong Temple framed and I think I will walk.  It is only a 20 minute walk according to Google, but with the traffic that I have to traverse and the people that I have to wind my way through, I am thinking it will be more like 45 minutes.  We shall see!