The Lemmertorium

10. No neighbors. We can be loud, obnoxious, and pretty much do what we want.

9. The doors. Every door in the house is a sliding glass panel. They remind you of Japanese style paper doors, but are a little sexier. One interesting tidbit about the door is that the glass is textured to prevent viewing, but one side is more transparent than the other. It’s freaky that, in the bathroom, you can see people clearly as they walk by. And get you get a little nervous each time you use it that they can see you too.

8. Ceiling. We live in an attic. Usually in China that means that you have to crouch whenever you’re near the walls of the apartment. This isn’t the case in ours. Our ceilings are really, really high. They’re open air and lovely.
7. Light. Along with the airiness provided by the ceiling we get a ton of light in the house. The kitchen is immaculate. The living room as a particularly interesting triangular window. It’s only drawback is that you can’t open it. We hired a guy to fix it…but he never did. (Probably doesn’t want to climb the stairs, I think).

6. Church. We don’t go to church, church comes to us! We’re so excited that there is a church just around the corner and down a block from our apartment. It’s really cool too, it’s on the second floor of a grocery store. The pastor is Korean, and they sing praise songs before the message. Last time we went someone actually played a guitar (though it was horribly out of tune.) The people are uber friendly and we like it a lot.
5. Washing Machine. In the last apartment the washing machine was in the kitchen, but rather than draining into the sink it drained through 30 feet of tubing into the bathroom. It also leaked a whole bunch. We installed it in the kitchen of this apartment, and drilled a hole through the wall so that it can drain into the bathroom. Showering turned into a unique experience when you were suddenly met with cold, soapy washing machine water at your feet instead of the traditionally warm and clear shower fair. However, we were able to fix this by running a tube directly into the drain. On top of that our clothes dry crazy fast on the balcony.
4. Balconies. Which brings us to our next item. The balconies are cool. We can cook on them, eat on them, throw our garbage off them, anything. OK, OK, we’ve never thrown our garbage off the balconies… Unless we don’t want to carry it downstairs… Which is pretty frequent, but c’mon, it is a construction zone!
3. Satellite TV. Now this is cool, and has already been mentioned. We have satellite TV. We get CNN, HBO, Cinemax, Starz, Cartoon Network, and several other top name channels. All for the low low (and one time) price of 1000 RMB. (That’s $120, giving us big name cable for ETERNITY!) It’s OK to be jealous. We understand.
2. Furniture. The couches at the old apartment were slightly nicer than sitting on wood. Slightly in that they don’t splinter… But now we have the plushest most comfy couches ever. Also, we have a coffee table that makes me want to reenact early Hebrew festivals. The table is a 2 inch slab of granite resting on wooden legs. I could easily buy a ram, slaughter it on the table, and burn it without harming the table at all! It would be worth it just to prove it’s true.
1. Bathroom. Finally, the greatest thing about the apartment is the bathroom. The western toilet puts the world back to how it should be. And, the shower tank is cool. We can set it to turn on and off in the morning before we get up, so that we can shower just as soon we crawl out of bed.