After the Hilton, we moved into Golden Bridge Garden apartments. The first thing
Cielo did was turn the table lamps on and off 400 times.
An important fact we discovered only after renting the place is that the bed
is very similar to a glass table top with a comforter on it. It took a
week for us to remember to sit down slowly and stop jamming all of our
vertebrae together when we sat down.
Next, she turned the tv on and off a few times (fewer than 400). The TV has three English channels (CCTV 9, CNN Asia, and HBO Asia), a handful of mostly sports channels, and 50 that show period soap operas. Since we've been here we've seen one dubbed episode of Junkyard Wars and Casablanca, among other things.
Cielo's addiction is to Sesame Street DVDs. We brought two with us, which was twice as many as Cielo needed, but after mom and dad started singing the Elmo Song in their sleep, another three DVDs were ordered from Amazon - and arrived in Shanghai after less than two weeks!
The main reason we chose Golden Bridge Garden (Jin Qiao Yuan) over the other two places we looked at was it had a playground. Not pictured: the slide, the open it/close it mini-door, and the baby steps.
The instructions on the washing machine are in hanzi (Chinese characters) only. Fortunately we got a brief tutorial from the staff when we were moving in. However, they forgot to give us help with the heaters, which are one-room heaters all controlled by the same remote. The remote is not only labeled in hanzi, but it's an LCD menu of hanzi.
After a few days, Alison and Cielo made a brave journey to ee-Key-uh (Ikea) in the Southwest part of Shanghai and bought some pans, plates, utensils, napkins, and bowls (all for less than $100). The next day, we had our first home-cooked meal. (Yes, Cielo will be sitting on a phone book for her meals for 8 weeks. (She's sitting on the Chinese-language phone book; the English language phone book for Shanghai is only half an inch thick)).
