Our Apartment

Our apartment is in a 30 floor high rise in a gated community.  We're on the 24th floor.  We have a key fob that allows us only to go to floor 1 and floor 24.  

When we step off the elevator, we are in our own private area outside of the apartment.  We put shoes in the outer cupboard. (We don't have that many shoes, so other things will go there once our shipment arrives.)

Inside the front door you can turn right or left.

To the left is the living room.  

Off to the left of the living room is a guest bath and bedroom.  Tessa is in this room.  If you come to visit, you get to sleep here! (We're still working on comforters etc--we brought a few, but not enough and shopping is difficult at this point; more on that in another post.)

To the right of the front door you have the dining room and further on is the kitchen.  

The kitchen has a dishwasher, which has never been used because this apartment has only had Chinese occupants and they don't like to use a dishwasher.  Sherry bought us some 'dishwasher soap'---which really is rinse aid! What we thought was a small oven on our video tour is a microwave.  So no oven.  I'm going to have to figure this out; I use my oven almost daily in the US, so I need a convection oven or learn to cook without one--either way, a bit of a learning curve. (If only that were the only learning curve!!!)

I have yet to organize my kitchen--I need to get a few more items before I can figure out where I want to put things. (Many things are coming in the shipment, but I need to buy a few things to get us by until then, but I'm having a hard time knowing what I can cook--what foods can I even get here--so I know what kind of equipment I need to get etc.)

We also have a washer and dryer--the dryer is highly unusual for the Chinese.  The translation on the washing machine for the spin cycle is 'dehydrator'. Pretty great.

Opposite of the washer is a small hallway that leads out to our AC/furnace and hot water heater.  The other door leads to a stairwell where we put our garbage and some wonderful person takes care of it.  We have to be careful going out that door because if the door closes, you are locked out.  It is permanently locked so no one can enter the apartment from that direction.  Thankfully we have this nice little cubby to store luggage; I was wondering what we were going to do with it.

Off the dining room is a hall that leads to a bathroom for Greta.

Further down the hall is a study/sun room (?) reading room (?) observation deck (?); maybe the Chinese would call this the balcony? But it is all enclosed, so maybe not....

Then there are two bedrooms at the end of the hall--Greta's and the master.

Inside the master bedroom is a closet area and a bathroom.  Yes, the tub is sunken--only about an 8" lip to climb over and is the depth of a regular tub, but quite a bit longer. At some point, we'll see how we like it, I guess!

In each bathroom there are towel warmers and a button that produces "heat wind".  

It is a very nice apartment---too nice for regular folks like us.  We had another one picked out, but Jacky really wanted us in the 'mansion' (ha! 1900 sq/ft), so it's where we are.  We are thankful to have many comforts amidst so many new experiences.