A joke and some photos

Ok, first a joke that GP translated for me today. I'm translating from English-as-a-2nd-language to native English:

A boy dumpling and a girl dumpling fell in love and got married. They went to the bridal suite at the big hotel for their first night as man and wife. The girl dumpling went in the bedroom first. After awhile, she called the boy dumpling in.

When the boy dumpling went in, he found a meatball on the bed. He said, "Who are you and where is my wife?" The meatball said, "It's me, silly. I've undressed."

Bwahaha!

*****

Move in photos of the new place. I hope to have some post-move in photos sometime this weekend.
The dining room. Notice the water dispenser on the left wall and all of the shelves on the right wall.



The guest bath shower, etc.



A real oven! Not too many of these in Suzhou. Also a nice range and sink. You can just see the real water heater through the window.





The living room. Lots of furniture (fairly comfy) and, again, many shelves. And a valet for some reason.





The master bedroom. A real, western-soft mattress. Looks very nice now. Comfy.



Master bath. I used the tub tonight (only showered before) and all seems well. The sink is nice, except the spout only reaches about 1 inch into the bowl. Not very convenient, but better than the last place.






The office. Usable desk and lots of shelves. The whole place is full of shelves. And wardrobes. And one, very small dresser :p





Views out the office window.





View off the living room balcony.





Oh, yeah, we're on the 10th floor this time instead of 29th. The elevator ride is much shorter. And less smelly :p

Western washer / dryer. Well, kind of western. All the buttons are in Chinese. Good thing I don't do any laundry :D



One last item: Three days after we left the last apartment, the landlord called and said I had mail in the mailbox. I had checked the mailbox the day we left. We received *nothing* for 11 months. The day after we leave, there is suddenly mail.

Moved and such

Yep, another 2.5 weeks since I updated. So busy. And a little lazy. Sorry, it's who I am :)

GP and I have moved to the new apartment. I want to get some photos up, but first I need to figure out Flickr. Since Yahoo Photos closed, I moved all my photos there, but haven't dug in to understand how it all works. Between moving, busy at work, slow internet at home and plain laziness, it hasn't happened.

I have moved a lot over the last 20 years. First to college, then to the apartment on 4th St, then the apartment on South 4th, then to North Ames, then to the duplex in Ames, then Ankeny, then Doylestown, Horsham, Hatboro, Bayside Apts in Suzhou, Landmark Apts, now Bailing Mansions. This move was relatively easy (contrary to what GP thinks, we don't have that much stuff, at least not by US standards). And 3 men with an open truck carried most of the things down the elevator, 2 blocks to the new place and up the other elevator (2 hours work for $20 US and they don't expect a tip).

We are officially settled in, though we have a few more small things to buy and some small repairs. Most of what we need to buy is knick-knacks to put on the shelves - probably 35 or so little shelves for display. The new place already seems cozier, though we miss the great sofa from Landmark.

I'll close with Happy Birthday! to Chad. We are toasting you from afar with Tsingdao :)

I'll really close with two language funnies. First, we spent the entire weekend with our friend, Lu Yan Hong. She is great - fun, nice, and always helps us move. The three of us were walking somewhere and I wanted to pay both the girls a compliment. I thought out a sentence in Chinese and got it all out pretty well. Then they both looked at me confused. I apologized quickly when I realized I called them men instead of women :( I have a lot of practice ahead of me.

GP's wonderful, inadvertant funny was during a toast. We each had a drink and GP raised her's declaring: "Cheers! Shut up!" I thought she meant it and so I laughed. I laughed harder when she said she meant to say "Cheers! Bottoms up!"

Thanks to KBF, GP is constantly squishing my head, ala "Kids in the Hall". I even found some clips on YouTube so she could see the source.

The integration

It seems GP won't have much trouble integrating to American society. Just last night we were watching snooker (Ding was playing). When the other guy was up to shoot, GP put her finger and thumb up to her eye and said "I'm squishing your head!"


Maybe that means we'd fit into Canada better. :)