Our Apartment

I know several of you have been wondering where we are living so we thought we should show you photos of our apartment. We will have two apartments this summer since such a large group of MIRTHE engineers will be traveling to China at different points this summer. This summer we will have undergraduate students, graduate students, a postdoc, research staff, and faculty come to Beijing from both Princeton and Rice Universities and from electrical engineering and environmental engineering. June will be moving into a university dorm as part of her National Science Foundation in China summer program, though for now she is living with us. She claims she'll hang out at our apartment if our internet connection is faster than hers, though I can't imagine how it could be much slower or flakier! -anna

Our apartment is in a high rise building that seems to be a mix of apartments and offices. These very nice ladies say hello and open the door for you every time you enter the building. The apartment next to ours seems to be a tv station's office. There is a 7-11 type convenience store downstairs and a foot massage place, although the photos of the feet are a little bit scary looking. There is also a restaurant that is sometimes open although they overcharged June for being a tourist so we aren't sure how we feel about them anymore.

Our apartment came with some "interesting" art. It has great windows for watching the urban landscape. The windows get very dirty here so the window washers keep busy here washing them. Yan let out quite a good scream the other day when she walked into her room and saw a man outside her window washing it! We live on the 12th floor!
It is great to have a kitchen and I love all the wonderfully colored and very tasty fruit. I bought a coffee maker at WalMart for $7 so now I can have my morning caffeine fix. We can't drink the tap water so we have water delivered. That too is quite inexpensive, about $2 for a 5 gallon container.