We made it. Today Mrs. Baldwin & I moved into our new apartment. We definitely couldn’t have done it without the help of good friends. Before today we were living in the School dormitory, which was really nice, but cramped. You can imagine a family of four living in a small bachelor pad with no kitchen. Technically there was a kitchen, upstairs in the common room, but it felt a bit awkward for us to cook for our family when the other “dormies” (Dormitory Roomies) needed it for themselves.

    The first obstacle we faced was deciding when to move out. In China it is not normal to pay rent monthly. You typically pay rent quarterly, semi-annually or annually. Most people pay quarterly. The problem we were trying to avoid, but didn’t, was if we move out too early, then rent month comes in the middle of Summer Vacation. Financially this is not a problem, however, this summer we are traveling, and we didn’t want the landlord coming while we were away to collect rent.

We went to a real estate agent nearby, as in China they are the ones who rent out properties. Property owners rent their homes to these agents, who then lease them to others. Anyways without a clear goal of when we wanted to move we told the first agent we went to that we wanted to move in May. This agent, we’ll call him Bob, took us for a walk around the area. We just kind of sauntered around to a couple places, and talked it was peaceful. We saw 1 shoebox sized place, and 1 nice place. We exchanged Wechat (Chinese Messenger/ Social Media) information and used that to talk. Wechat has a built in Text translator. After the places Bob showed us, we said ado and went off to have ice-cream and a date day.

It took us a while before we really started looking, Irish and the kids were itching to get out of the dorm, it just wasn’t enough space. So Irish and I continued the search. We sent a message to Bob, to see if he had any new places to show us. He didn’t respond. So we went to another agency, where all the men tried politely not to talk to us and kept pushing the lady agents to talk to us. For about 30 minutes another customer translated for us what we were looking for. The thing is, if any of them had tried to talk to us, my Chinese listening skills are ok, and worst case scenario, we could use a translator program like Google Translate. They were just too terrified to try.

Eventually a lady arrived back at work and she wasn’t afraid to deal with us. She didn’t speak much English, but was not scared of us so this was a good start. We’ll call her Jenny. Jenny showed us a couple places on her computer and asked if we’d like to go see the real places, which of course we did. So Jenny took us out, ordered an Uber-like taxi service and we traveled. Now the first place was supposed to be near the local subway, which is a 15 minute walk to the school I work at. It wasn’t. It would have taken 45 minutes to walk it with the kids. Yes there were buses nearby, and yes the apartment was really nice. The owner made us wait about 20 minutes, while he bought beer, before letting us see his place. He offered me a beer, but I turned him down, as I don’t drink.

Jenny took us to a couple other places, each a bit far from the area we wanted, and close to the limit of what we wanted to pay. (Sometimes over). 1 place had no elevator, but was on the 5^th floor. 1 place had someone living in it. She claimed he was moving out the next day, but nothing was packed, and he had running machines and other heavy equipment in there, so I got the impression they were evicting him. We asked Jenny if she had anything in specific buildings nearby, and she said that they didn’t because those building were too old and wouldn’t suit our needs. We thanked Jenny and went for lunch.

At this point we decided to just drop by Bob’s office. His company had helped some friends in the past, and we really liked him. It turned out Bob was out of the city but had asked his friend Paul to help us out. Paul told us about a couple places (Translator programs and my broken Chinese). So we hopped on his and his partner’s motorcycles and zoomed off to see the first place. No helmets, and this bothered me a little but terrified Irish. We came to the first apartment, right where we had asked Jenny earlier today. Nice place, but the kitchen was a bit scary.

So Paul and his partners got us back on the motorcycles, and drove us a bit farther away. This apartment was practically perfect, except it was again too far from the school. Now, to clarify, our concern with the distance is not because I’m too lazy to take a bus. We wanted a place nearby because we wanted the kids to be able to walk to school in the morning, and walk home with Irish in the afternoon. So we went back to Paul’s Office. Paul asked us about what we wanted, and we explained that he only problem with the first place was the kitchen, and he promised to have that fixed up for us.

So here we are just having moved in across the street from work, in the building that Paul found us, and we discover that my daughter’s classmate is in our building. Two of my co-workers are also in our building. The kids now have their own bedroom for the first time in 20 months, and I can finally share a bed with my wife….

    I know it’s actually Day 3, but I’m writing about yesterday.

    The smog yesterday was the same level as the day before (See Smog day 1). The school stayed empty and barren. As a family we stayed at home and played. We watched 2 different Charlie Brown Christmas Specials (1960’s and 1990’s). The kids received homework assignments from their teachers by WeChat. Unfortunately they couldn’t do it.

One assignment was to help mom and day with household chores, and take pictures of it. Well living in a dormitory, and the simple household chores we do here last a whole 20 seconds at a time, so by time we get the camera out, the kids are done. We cannot vacuum, sweeping is only needed for a short distance. And laundry was done the day before. A lot of parents posted pictures of the kids washing their feet. I’m not going to ask my children to wash my feet. I love them, and want them to learn respect, but my feet get pretty smelly and I wouldn’t ask anyone to get down there and clean them for me. I can do that, and save them the torture.

Another assignment was to practice reading with the kids. This we could do, if the homework had been sent by their English teacher. However, the assignment was from their Chinese teacher, and as neither my wife nor I can read Chinese yet, we forfeited. My son can read quite a bit, but he is still not at the level to read everything yet.

I was a bit nicer to my students, I asked my students to look at coloured balloons in their books and write the colours. It’s more focused, less vague, and even if their families cannot speak English, the kids know where to find the names of colours in their textbooks, and are able to do it.

Last night as I ran out to pick up dinner for us all, I notice that the school had used this downtime productively, we now have 2 12foot Christmas trees at the front gate of our school. Last night Sammy asked as we said our bedtime prayers if we could ask God to clear away the smog. We did, and this morning ther is a bright blue sky and no clouds or visible smog, I will check the rating on Irish’s phone later.