So, some snippets from China (at least the very small part I've seen). The bits and pieces that don't quite fit into any other blog post will appear here.
So when we first got to China, we dutifully went out and purchased our drinking water (we were staying in a hotel that first week until we found a more permanent place to stay) and this is what the bottles had around their necks:
Just so you could confirm for yourself that the pH of the water was appropriate - not so funny now we've been through this milk scandal.
We don't have a car in China - simply isn't worth the effort to get a licence and, well, to be honest we'd probably not survive the traffic! So we walk, take taxis or the bus. It took us a while to find out that the signs at the bus stops:
were not telling us the times that the buses would get there, but the stops that the bus made - and we still don't know what the bus frequency is, only that they are frequent enough for us not to care (and taxis are cheap enough to be a reasonable option if we're in a hurry).
Now that we've opened a Chinese bank account this probably won't happen again, but the first payday arrived so fast that they paid Brett in cash - the secretary from the office had it there, it was a Friday, and Brett wasn't intending on heading back into the office but relented - here is what 80% of a month's pay looks like in cash:
Although there will be a post on apartment hunting, I wanted to talk about the kitchens - they all seem to be closed off from the rest of the apartment with glass doors, they are all pretty small and don't have ovens
(though this one has a toaster-oven on top of the microwave) plus the benches only come up to underneath my hips.
And airconditioning, when available, is provided by tower units in the main room and smaller wall units near the ceiling in the bedrooms - nothing is built in - the outlet hose goes through a (often not neat) hole in the wall.
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