Lease Signing

Nov. 1, 2016
10:30 pm
Beijing, China

Happy November!

So today I had the day off. “But, Kristen, you just had the weekend off! It’s so nice to have a schedule like that.” Ah, but wait. Once again, don’t get too jealous. This is just a one time thing. At EF the regular weekends (Saturday and Sunday) are actually our busiest days. As a result, our “weekends” come in the middle of the week. So starting from now on, I will either have Tuesday and Wednesday off or Wednesday and Thursday. It just happened to be that this week I only worked one day between my days off.

Unlike my last day off, though, today was pretty full. Taylor, Brian, and I left the hotel at about 9:00am to head down to our apartment building to sign the leases. Yes, Taylor decided to live in the same apartment building as me. Actually, she’s only a couple doors down from me. It’s going to be a pretty long commute for her, but hopefully she’ll like having Brian and me around. So, anyway, we lugged four suitcases through the train system and then on a good 10 minute walk to the building. My pink bag (so, my second checked bag) officially died today. It’s structure was pretty much done for before I left home, but I think they must have thrown it or something on the airplane, because it was pretty bad after the trip. So, “bye, bye, pink bag.”

After we got there, Taylor went to pick her apartment and then we sat down to sign the leases. It didn’t take super long to sign, but all of the other stuff, like figuring out utilities and how it all works, took a while. I ended up spilling scalding hot water on my thighs (something I really don’t recommend). It was all a bit of a long, drawn out fiasco. But, finally, everything worked out. We got to go see our apartments and drop stuff off. Mine was a little dirty and the bathroom smelled a bit weird and Brian’s was super dusty. The landlord said that a janitor would clean them this afternoon, so hopefully they’ll be better tomorrow.

Oh yeah, I guess I didn’t mention that. We signed our leases and paid our first payment today, but all three of us decided to take advantage of the wifi and free breakfast at the hotel for one more night. So when I got back, I took a very, very long hot shower and finished packing up my stuff. The rest of the evening has been devoted to reading and watching “Beauty and the Beast.” Tomorrow is the nervciting (to steal a word from Uncle Ed) day when I officially become an expat living in Beijing!!!! We’ll see how it goes.

Bless,
Kristen

P.S. The little guy in the picture was hanging out in the hallway outside my room at the hotel. I thought I’d share him with you all.