So we’re all moved in to our new digs down at BeiGongDa. It was a bit of a mission, but we made it. Fortunately Lao Ma, my former student, volunteered his car for the mission. Still needed a taxi for the last few bits and pieces. For a while there, though, lzh was trying to pretend she’d ride her bike here. We talked her out of that, folded her bike up, and put her in a taxi. There honestly wasn’t even a tiny little bit of space left in Lao Ma’s car. We have too much stuff, and the scary thing is that most of our stuff is stored up in the village.
And then on the way there we saw one more reason why it would’ve been a really, really bad idea for her to ride her bike all the way here, as if the distance alone weren’t enough. As we were coming down the east side of the Third Ring Road, about halfway down, the rain suddenly started coming down so heavily you could’ve been forgiven for thinking you’d suddenly been transported somewhere way down south where it floods all summer.
Anyway, we got here. It’s all good. Well, almost. The university’s broadband is broken in this area, judging by a notice we came across on the way back from the supermarket and the complete lack of activity when I plug it in. I can’t get a China Uselesscom signal anywhere in this apartment. I’m going to take the computer over to the office tomorrow and try again from there. So I’m stuck using this not very cheap dial up for the time being, which I guess means I can’t go spending too much time online.
Still, if I get some of these part-time jobs going, I might not be able to spend too much time online. And even if I don’t, this could be motivation to spend less time online. We’ll see.
But I must say: This apartment is really nice. It already feels like home, none of that new apartment oddness. And the university even supplies a nice, big Lenovo desktop computer with a printer, which would be more useful with a functioning internet connection, but will still be very useful for backing up files, storing stuff and thereby freeing up space on this hard drive, and preparing decent lesson materials, should I get that motivated. But otherwise, it’s great, feeling like this is home pretty much as soon as we’ve walked in the door and unpacked our stuff.
And, actually, that’s about all I have to write today. But don’t worry, I’m still here, and things will return to normal once I get something approaching a decent internet connection sorted out. Or at least, once I find a place that has a China Uselesscom signal.
