Third week in Kunming

Getting the hang of things

After much aimless wandering of Kunming, I am finally feeling like I have a grasp on things. Still many surprises in daily life but it's not overwhelming anymore. Food = lots of Sichuan pepper. This means mouth-numbing spiciness, literally. Erin and I counteracted the peppers with 木瓜水 ("papaya water") while Julia, a Latvian girl we met, just gave up halfway through her meal. Direct answers to questions = impossible. Don't ever expect useful information on the first try or you'll find yourself in perpetual frustration. Also, be prepared for cold and warm weather or sudden bouts of torrential rain. Apparently, the "city of eternal spring" means the weather is as unpredictable as spring in the Pacific NW.

A place to call home

Erin and I have embarked on an exciting apartment-search adventure. Since it has been so noisy in the international students' dorm, we are taking advantage of the housing stipend to move off-campus. It seemed so easy at first: tons of flyers advertise apartments all the time. So we start contacting the people. But all of the apartments were either very dirty or already taken. Meanwhile, we get to listen to nightly concerts of furniture-rearrangement and door-knocking. Erin finds a nearby apartment and we think "Sure, let's take it". In a whirlwind of document exchange, we find ourselves registered with a local police department, contracted to an apartment for 10 months and officially accepting a housing stipend. Perfect, right?

On a whim, I decide to see if there were new apartments posted on gokunming.com (very useful website for foreigners here). OF COURSE, there was an apartment that sounded perfect. Four bedrooms, wireless internet, fully furnished, two bathrooms... the works. The best part, it costs the same amount as the apartment we had agreed to rent. The location isn't as nice but not in the middle of suburbia either. "Hm...", we start weighing the advantages of a much cheaper and possibly nicer apartment against alienating the guy we have a contract with. "Well, it couldn't hurt to go see the apartment."

Surprisingly, the new apartment really is wonderful. A little further away than expected but clean and very spacious. Also, Julia and Valentina (an Italian girl) are looking for an apartment. So maybe we can give them the apartment we originally wanted to rent and suffer no consequences from backing out of the contract. EXCEPT, there aren't four rooms available at the new apartment. A Chinese boy and an Australian boy already live in two of the rooms. So I call the girl who posted the advertisement to get a better idea of what is going on. She assures me that all of the four rooms can be rented to me, if I so desire.

"But what about the two boys living there?" I naively ask.

"Well, they have a six-month contract so I will return their money and you can decide if you want to keep them." Like they're some kind of pet or houseplant that comes with the apartment? I can let them stay or kick them out, as I please?

She's not even the landlord, but is some sort of go-between person that (I am sure) profits a lot from being the middle(wo)man. Sketchily enough, she was very hesitant about giving out the landlord's phone number to any of the residents . None of us are sure that the landlord wouldn't take her side anyways, so we'll probably just take the price she asks. Luckily the stipend is large enough that Erin and I will still be making more money than at the other apartment, so whatevs. We're getting paid so little that we'll take whatever extra cash we can get. Better to quit while we're ahead.

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