The Great Flood

I mentioned in an earlier post about the heating situation in China, and since the heat was turned on in the building Novemeber 15th, I have, despite much effort been unable to get my heat to work. After my wonderful Chinese Thanksgiving, I came home and tried for the third time to get my heat fixed. The guy came to my apartment fiddled with things and declared everything fixed. For the next hour my apartment seemed to be getting warmer. Then I started to hear a trickling sound but didn't think anything of it until I had to use the bathroom and walked across my apartment and into a giant puddle of water in my apartment. As I found out later, when they built the building they didn't seal the water pipe to the apartment heater correctly and it leaked through the dry wall all over my floor.

It now appears that they will have to tear the drywall down and fix the piping this week. So my apartment will be come a work zone until Wednesday.

I went to McDonald's for lunch today with my friend because I was sick of Chinese food. As it turns out we arrived during "special time." Special time is what the girl at the counter called it and I can only assume it mean that it was just a happy hour of sorts were all the food is discounted. I ended up getting a Big Mac meal with a large fry, two chocolate milkshakes and a water for 24 RMB, which is a little less then $4. The other thing was that because it was "special time" many Chinese students were at 麦当劳 (McDonald's in Chinese, pronounced Mai Dang Lao) studying. I wish I had gotten a picture of it but it took us 15 minutes to get a seat. I am not sure how anyone could study in there for hours with that greasy smell, but it is China so....

In other news, my one classmate is looking to move off campus next semester, so we have to decided to look for apartments together next week. I hope that by getting a roommate, I can reduce the cost of rent by almost half. Any chance to save money is a good thing I think. Plus it will be nice to have a roommate. The other cool part is that he is from Kazakhstan. He also doesn't speak English that well, so we usually have to communicate in a mix of English and Chinese, which is great for both of our Chinese.

One last thing, my school just decided to post an emergency exit plan for the students and so I thought I'd share with the three emergency exits! Also, if you live on the top floors and their is a fire, there is no way in hell your going to survive because their is only one stairwell. Anyway, here is the picture: