We have been asked to post some pictures of our apartment here in Wuxi, so here they are! Living in China is interesting ... thus far it is our experience that buildings are not well maintained. When built they are typically gorgeous, but then they go down hill very quickly. It is quite sad really, but I guess it keeps people employed since there is always new buildings being constructed. 
So what are some of the issues we've experienced with our apartment??? Well, I'll start out by saying that our apartment had been unhabited (by humans) for about 5 months before we moved in. Of course I had to specify humans, because plenty of creatures found their way in during that 5 months! Ryan has gone through so many cans of Raid that we should own some of the company by now! We even had our apartment professionally sprayed twice. In the beginning we found the usual spiders, small worms, mosquitoes, these small black flies and centipedes. The majority of the centipedes were in the basement - which we never use - but a few found their way upstairs. The centipedes ranged from 1-6 inches!
We still find the spiders, worms, black flies, the occassional mosquito and now crickets! One day we came home from a walk and Ava went right to the living room, picked something up from the floor and then thankfully reached out to give it to Ryan... yep, it was a cricket! Thank goodness it wasn't anything that could bite her. Perhaps we are "spoiled" Americans not used to bugs in our house because it doesn't seem like it bothers the Chinese people. They leave their front door wide open (and ours if they visit) and open windows without screens to get "fresh" air.
Another thing we have found living in china that if you have someone come over, they are there for one specific thing and will not do anything more than that task. For instance, we had someone over to look at our AC units because they weren't working. The person came over and fixed it, but later we asked about the filters in the AC and someone else had to come over for that. It would have made too much sense for the same person that fixed our AC to also check out (and clean) the filters.
If we had to choose again, I am not sure I would have picked this place. We love the location - there are many restaurants within a 5-10 minute walk, including a Papa Johns, Subway, McDonalds and KFC - and we like not being on the 24th floor of a large apartment building. Plus, we have a LARGE kitchen which is almost unheard of here in China! However, the garden which was a reason why I wanted this apartment, has yet to be used and is probably one of the main reasons we have all of the bugs! Plus, it's a pretty big apartment which makes cleaning a big chore. And I thought our house in Kalamazoo got dirty fast - I don't think I'll ever complain about that after living in China! 
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| Ava's Room |
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| Our bedroom |
Not Pictured: Garden, Bathrooms (we have 3), Guest Room (on top floor) and Office (on top floor - but we cannot use it as an office because you cannot get WIFI on the top floor)!
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