First remove the squid

Yesterday I moved into my new home, in the north of the Kunming city. The area itself is not particularly nice, and a stuffy 30-minute busride away from the central places. Old concrete buildings and dusty streets. But the building where I'm staying is a fairly fancy one, and the flat is probably the biggest I have seen so far in China. My room, on the other hand, is a tiny little box with just enough space for a bed, a little desk, and a bookshelf. But that's all i need :) The best thing is that it's *my* room, a place where I can take a break from the outside world. On the downside, just outside my bedroom window roars a huge 2-level road, so instead of the ideal waking up to birds singing, i get to wake up to honk honk wroooooom.

Other occupants of the flat include the parents, a 20-something girl called Yin Jia, a half-deaf grandpa into whose ear you need to shout in order to communicate and a grandma who has been deaf all her life and is spoken to with hand signs (which really works, into an extent, as I found myself having a conversation with her this morning about how annoying the big road is, being noisy and dirty, so they have to clean the windows a lot).

In addition, there are a couple of chickens living in a cardboard box, whom I suspect may be invited to Spring Festival dinner in a special dress, as well as a big bucket of dead squid in the bathroom just under the shower. Made me giggle yesterday when the dad was explaining to me how the shower works, as he began by "first move out the smelly squid". This should possibly be included in the user's manual.

Understandably, I still feel like a guest and kind of tiptoe around, not quite knowing what i should or shouldn't do. But all in all it all seems very nice. Just a couple of more days to go until Spring Festival....!!!