Home Sweet Home?

It's hard to believe that we've actually arrived at our new home. After 5 weeks of traveling and constant motion, living out of a backpack was beginning to feel like a natural way of being. I woke up this morning and was surprised when I couldn't find my toothbrush in the right zipper pocket. Actually, that's not true. I woke up this morning and groaned/mumbled incoherently for a solid 5 minutes (it was the first time I had to wake up before 8am in awhile) before even trying to move. Mornings just aren't a happy time for me.

I feel like I need to describe our accommodations here in Suzhou. I could go into a detailed description of my surroundings, but I think it is more efficient for the reader to imagine that Mr. Wang (my boss) walked into the nearest Holiday Inn and stole as much of their furniture as he possibly could and placed it in our apartment. The whole apartment has a very sterile "hotel" feel to it (except the bathroom has been shrunk and we have a glass-enclosed balcony kitchen). Everything is very nice - we have all the modern conveniences that you might expect (TV, DVD player, A/C, fridge, washer, water tank, etc...) Basically, the place is at least 10 times as nice as my apartment in NYC. It doesn't have half the character though :)

Half the reason I decided to come to China was to pirate as many movies as possible. Little did I know that the Chinese government prevents downloading! Does this make sense? I thought China was the land that pirated everything from movies to clothing. I almost shed tears when uTorrent wouldn't work this morning... I know the downloading is happening here though because everybody and their uncle is selling ripped off DVDs. Ah well, a cruel joke that the internet gods have played on me.

Oh, I also found out that spicy rabbit legs are absolutely delicious. I'm not going to eat much else in the near future...

- Jon