China - Week 51 (8/24-27): Unpacking and Settling In

After Jisue left back to Korea I spent the rest of the week unpacking my boxes from the move. It may seems that, considering I didn’t have a TON of stuff to move, that it shouldn’t take me more than a day or two to unpack, but in actuality, I sort of threw a lot of random things in boxes that were long overdue for organization of their own, so part of my unpacking process has been to organize all the things I haven’t had time to organize over the last few months at my old place.

As a result, unpacking one box ends up taking 3 or 4 hours, due to the fact that there are about 150 different random odds and ends in the box that I need to deal with. It takes longer to unpack, but it’s pretty satisfying when I get through a box.

A couple other things that I was up to during the end of the week and weekend …

On Wednesday afternoon, after I got back from the airport, my Ikea delivery arrived. Just some pots, pans, a small rug and a few other odds and ends, but I had a nice time unpacking and sorting through those. After that was all done Tam came over and we hung out watching episodes of “Joey” and just generally relaxing in the new pad.

Thursday was another afternoon spent unpacking and going through boxes. In the evening I got a visit from Zhu Wen Jun, who came over and watched some DVDs with me. Ocean’s Eleven, followed by some of Ocean’s Twelve. But after a while Lisa came over and the three of us hung out and chatted for a while. Then after ZWJ had to leave Lisa and I stuck in some “Arrested Development” and she made her way through the end of the series. Awww .. so sad. It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend.

Friday I had made arrangements to meet up with ZWJ and give her a ride on my scooter to her appointment to go teach Mark Wu. For those of you on jiayo.com, he’s hiroyukiwu, a guy from the U.K. who is here teaching English and studying wushu. It was actually the frist time I met him since all our interaction had been through SMS up to that point. While him and ZWJ were working on wushu I went and got a hair wash and massage down the street. Then I gave ZWJ a ride back to the school and went back home. Friday night I hung out and did more unpacking.

Saturday was another unpacking day (this is getting redundant) and in the evening Mark came over, we ordered a pizza, and watched wushu videos and Hong Kong movies. It was pretty fun and he ended up staying until around midnight or so.

And Sunday was another day of unpacking. Again, not much happened except that I watched some DVDs in the middle there.

Actually, the significant thing about this week is that it marks my 1 year anniversary of moving to China. I moved here on August 23, 2005 and coincidentally I was back at PuDong International Airport on August 23, 2006 to drop off Jisue for her flight back to Korea. My life had come full circle. But now I’m in a new home, with a new direction (once my unpacking is done, that is) and things are moving along quite well.

I put up some pictures of my place and utilizing Picasa and Google’s new photo hosting service I have put them up for all to see. Click on the thumbnail to view them.

08/26/2006 - My new home in Shanghai

Aug 26, 2006 - 4 Photos

And, so there you have it.  The end of Week 51 and my first year.  The only thing that confuses me is … aren’t there 52 weeks in a year?  Perhaps I started “week 1″ after the first 7 days, in which case this is actually Week 52.

Meh .. whatever.  From now on I plan on changing the naming format for my blog entries so it’s all moot anyway.