Lion Head Fountain= Fancy

Today I found some old photos of our first few days in Shanghai.  Most of these were taken around our neighborhood and will give you an idea of how it has been built to look luxurious and pricey.  It is pricey, but since I currently have multiple issues with appliances, lighting, and some sort of sewer smell creeping in through the kitchen pipes I think we can all agree that the luxury is only an illusion!  Ah, the first few days of our new house!

This is going up at the end of the street.  It isn’t the loudest construction sound, though.  Lots of my neighbors are constantly ripping out the insides of their houses or digging new basements so the hum of jack hammers is our new background music.  Yesterday Lucas commented that he wished all the workers would take a break so he could have some “peace and quiet”.  Get off his lawn!When the movers were unloading the truck the kids thought it would be fun to climb inside the shipping container.  The Chinese moving men thought this was hilarious, but questioned what kind of a parent would let her children climb up in the truck.  No one could move any boxes because we all needed to hover around the edge of the crate in case a kid fell out.

Not our house.

The houses in our compound all look very similar.  We have street names, but everyone is really identified by their house number.  I don’t even know the name of the street our house is on and it isn’t part of our mailing address.

Also not our house.

Ok, this one is actually our house.

We have a townhouse.  When we were looking for a place to live, we saw so many things in such a short period of time that I couldn’t remember many details about this specific compound or the houses we saw while we were here.  There are bigger houses, but I thought they all had three bedrooms.  We need four bedrooms, especially if there isn’t a playroom or basement.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of my friends has four bedrooms in a much larger house in our compound.  She has a huge kitchen!  Her yard is 10 times bigger than mine!  She is also paying $3,000 more A MONTH.  So a townhouse it is for now.  

Here is our mailbox that fills with water when it rains.  We may or may not pay extra for this.  I have extremely clean mail.

Flowers from the flower market. I always need the purple flowers for the front of the house.

Even though we have less space than before, we are walking distance to Ava and Henry’s school.  Lucas gets dropped off near one of the gates and the kids have more freedom in the neighborhood than ever before.  They like the compound (which still feels weird to say) and love being able to ride their bikes and walk to a playground.  The back yard is small, but the dog gets more walks now.  Pluses and minuses, you know.  For now, we are trying to focus on the pluses.