Delivery, Delivery, Delivery

I could become addicted to this! Everyone delivers here, usually for free, sometimes for a small fee. You can go buy groceries, then have them delivered (thank goodness since I don’t know how I’d get them in and out of a cab with 3 kids and a stroller to boot!), order dinner, have it delivered, buy furniture, have it delivered. And sometimes, there is no wait! The other night, we had to have the delivery boy wait with our groceries so we could catch a cab and make it home before he did. I bought some flowers yesterday around the corner from our complex and the lady hopped on her little bike – put Ashley in the back (it was a little three wheel bike with a platform for carrying the plants) and away she went to our house to deliver the flowers we had purchased. 35 plants for about $7.00 US and she delivered them to us for free! I put the flowers where I wanted them in our yard and this morning, the lady who waters our lawn planted them for me. Sheesh, I could get used to this!

On the other hand, there are some very annoying things. Lots of paperwork for things here. To join the country club here (part of our complex), you have to submit 3 passport photos (I have no idea why) and fill out all this paperwork, have a guarantee letter and pay a deposit. It takes a long time and can be frustrating trying to figure out what is needed and who it goes to.

We also are running out of hot water rather quickly and when we told the service center here at the complex, they sent a guy out who told us to turn up the heat on the water heater. We did that, even though we didn’t want to – due to possibility of scalding the kids – but that didn’t work. We’ll see how long it takes to have them actually understand what we mean and fix it.

The air conditioning in our house isn’t working, so we told the service center and the answer was that they haven’t turned on the AC yet for the buildings. Apparently, all the houses share the same HVAC unit and they don’t turn it on until they do an inspection of every unit in the complex, which they started last week and won’t finish for a few more weeks. So, it’s hot in our house and muggy. I’ll be glad when they can get it turned on.

We finally have cable and two TV’s hooked up. The quality is pretty bad and we only get a few English channels. Not all of the ones they have here, I’m not sure why we only get a select few. We had a guy out to look at the picture and try and fix the quality, but no can do.

Anthony and I did quite a bit of shopping last week. We bought some furniture – first at IKEA – gotta love that store! And then at an antique Chinese furniture store down the street. It’s got some great furniture in it, some insanely pricey, but some rather reasonable. We got an antique piece to put our TV on in the living room. I’ll take a photo and post when I get a chance. IKEA was a madhouse, crazy busy. It’s HUGE too! We also shopped at Carrefour for everyday items and that place was pretty crazy busy too. Don’t know if it was because it was a holiday week or because it is always that busy. Hopefully not always that busy.

We’ve had one unfortunate incident so far, not to us directly, but our ayi – Xiaoshu. Last Thursday, while riding her bike home from our house, she got hit by a car. She is ok, just a little bruised with a very sore arm/shoulder. She worked on Friday and then had Saturday and Sunday off. She’s back today and doing well, although I don’t think her shoulder is ok – she can’t lift it all the way. She doesn’t speak English very well so I haven’t been able to find out if she went to a doctor to have it looked at or not. I hope she has.