Outside the Cocoon

As requested, here are some photos of my balcony and the outside of buildings. These are not pictures of the outside of my building, but the outside of buildings you can see from my window. They are very similar in appearance to my building. I took these a couple days ago when it was raining and I had to stay in. What? An Oregonian refusing to go out in the rain? Well, brother, when you have to go everywhere on foot you're a whole lot less apt to go out in the rain if you don't have to. Wet clothes take a long time to dry when this is your only dryer...



These are cables on the roof over my balcony. They are for drying clothes. Electric clothes dryers are unheard of here since both appliances and electricity are expensive. In this next picture you can see the blue stick I use to hang the clothes on hangers from the wires. The clothes lines are too high up to reach...that way you can stand out on the balcony and not have to dodge wet clothes. Clothes hanging t odry on a balcony or outside a window is a very common sight here in China.

Not a fabulous picture, but it's hard to take a good one in a small space. Here's the view outside my living room window. Yes, there are bars on it. But remember, I'm on the fifth floor. I am not sure why these bars are there, but I think they are more to prevent people from falling out than for keeping people from getting in.

Here's the same view from the kitchen bay window (the one with the fans from my last post) which has no bars. You can see the hanging laundry here. I know at least some of the Chinese faculty is housed in this building.

Here's the same building again from the other living room window. It looks like several buildings, but it's all one. My building is similarly staggered like stairsteps. Each front has it's own door, so in getting directions to my (and most Chinese) apartment, it is essential to get the door number as well as the apartment number. My building has several apartments with the same number as mine, but mine is the only one behind door four. At the bottom of this picture the long pipes you see running suspended in the air are for hot water...not for use in the shower, but for the radiators that heat the campus in winter.

"Yes, yes, Christense, it's all very well and good with the buildings, but how about some people?" Well, I'm working on it. This is reflective of my experience here, first I have to acclimate myself to my surroundings before I can begin building relationships with people. Soon!