Nomadic Lifestyle Over

I now have a home! I walked in, when it was filthy, with moving boxes everywhere after climbing 6 flights of stars and I saw it....the potential. Love at first sight. I can't tell you why it resonated with me, but it did and on top of it it fell under my budget and within complete convenience.

My new house is a 3 bedroom apartment on the top floor with no elevator. It took me hours to clean it after the previous owners left it in a hurry (a last minute move, no bugs or anything), it needs a new paint job and the couches are pretty rough looking. But I have comfortable place to sleep, I have a place to make my food, a place to have friends over, a place to do my work and when I walk in I feel good.

A couple things to mention around this, one has to do with pollution and the other with cats. Pollution happens to be a huge problem in China, in case you didn't know and is one of the reasons I run in the mornings (the pollution is not as stirred up). A couple hundred yards from my house is a "smoke stack". A huge tower that emits smoke hundreds of feet into the air. It has become a bit of a landmark for me. When I'm on the bus, or even walking, I can see it from a couple miles away and know that's where my house lays. Good thing is it only runs a few months a year. It runs in the winter to burn coal for heating for people's homes. But after seeing how many of these things there are and how much smoke is getting pushed out, I can say I'm completely unsurprised about the pollution problem (more on this later).

So cats. You don't see them at first. But they are there, lots of them, none of them neutered or spayed. This is sad, but the only thing probably keeping the numbers low is the unlikelihood of kittens surviving. Little to no food source, not many places to hide and lots of competition. Why do I mention the cats? Because I feel they are part of living in a home in China, as part of the scenery as raccoons or squirrels in the states. They are both pests, but keep the other pests away. I don't see rats, cuz I see cats. And honestly our garbage might be a little bigger, if it weren't for our friends, the cats.

I don't have much else to add, except I have a house and it is thrilling, you are welcome over anytime :)