Underground malls, art exhibits and chocolate mousse

This week has been an interesting one here in Beijing. It's been really cold and apparently, most people's heat does not come on until November 15th. I have no idea why it's not until mid November before anyone's apartment feels warm. And the heat that comes on is not central heating but radiator heating. We have a radiator underneath each window and it's encased in a wooden box with a vent on the front so the warm air can escape. I hope they work well! I guess I'll find out in two weeks if they do or not. Until then, we have been bundling in blankets and keeping the bathroom and kitchen doors shut because for some reason, those are the two most freezing rooms. (We do have a unit in the ceiling that is both a heater and an air conditioner. We just barely figured out how to switch the function from AC to heat, it's all in Chinese so it was a lot of trial and error with pushing all of the buttons. When we were running the AC in August, our utility bill was really expensive and we don't want that to happen again. So we have been rationing our heater use, mostly in the morning and when Will is awake and playing by himself. But, it only heats the living and dining area so it's really not that effective. So we are not completely without heat, just almost.)

We also celebrated my 25th birthday on Wednesday. We debated about what to do and our options were slightly limited by the fact that we had to bring Will with us wherever we decided to go and by the fact that it was cold outside. We ended up going to the China World Trade Center tower, it's one of  the tallest skyscrapers in Beijing with 81 floors. The Church Office Building in SLC is 28 stories so this building is almost three times taller! They have a restaurant on the top floor and we ate chocolate mousse while we watched the sunset and observed the enormous city from this new perspective. All the waitresses were completely mesmerized by Will and we found them frequently staring at us or just coming over to our table and standing there watching him. 

The China WTC tower sits on top of a huge underground mall, it was so cool. We rode the subway to get there and the station connects directly to the mall which connects directly to the WTC. So we didn't even have to go outside to get from the subway to the restaurant. It was so nice! On our way back through the mall, this girl just started talking to us to practice her English. She told us she was a senior art student and some of her work was on display at a student exhibit in the next tower over. We decided to go with her to look at the exhibit and ended up buying two of her pictures. This winter one is my favorite. They are mounted on silk that you can roll them up scroll-style so hopefully we can pack them home safely when the time comes.

After we made it home, we put Will to bed and ordered some Italian food from Annie's and just had it delivered to our apartment. That's one thing about city living I could definitely get used to: free delivery! So nice. Even McDonald's delivers here. They put your food in a heat box that's mounted onto an electric bike and they bike it over to you. The bikes are nice because they can deliver fast regardless of what traffic looks like. Anyway, the fettuccine alfredo was HEAVENLY!! The creamy parmesany goodness was something I had really been craving. Happy birthday to me!

This week is also midterms for Joel's students. They do it college finals week style here - no classes, just tests. So Joel has all week to grade and get ready for the last stretch until the Chinese New Year break. 

We've almost been here for three months now and I can't believe how the time has flown by. And we've made so much progress since we moved here and learned so much. I was thinking yesterday about how I'm really grateful we had the chance to move here. Joel and I have a lot more time to just focus on our little family and our lives (in some ways) are much more simple. We sold our cars, got rid of our smartphones and couldn't bring many belongings with us. I hardly miss most of our stuff. (I do really miss my skis, it will be two more seasons before I can go. I was pregnant last ski season so that will be three years total!)