Getting Settled

Our getting settled period seems to be taking longer than expected. When Henri is awake it's near impossible to get anything accomplished and when he is asleep I have to be oh so quiet. Henri's crawling skills are improving and he has started to follow us around a little bit. Unfortunately he injures himself a lot, too, bashing his head into the coffee table, the floor, etc.

I'm starting to get used to the building and the neighborhood. I didn't realize before moving in that our building's underground garage is only accessible by car elevator. So the garage door opens, you drive in, roll down the window and hit the appropriate button, and the elevator first rotates about 45 degrees then lifts you up to the street level. I'm not a fan but I have not allowed my new found fear of car elevators paralyze me... One day our building dog just cruised into the car elevator when Maxime drove in, sat there patiently as it rose to the street and then was off on his merry way.

One aspect of the neighborhood that requires some getting used to are these vehicles that drive around with loud speakers blaring some message in Chinese. They stop every block or so and the same sentence or two is repeated over and over and then they move on. You hear them coming several blocks away so it takes a while to be free of them. Apparently they are trying to lure you out of your house to mainly take something off your hands - they might buy your cardboard boxes or an old computer. Luckily Henri doesn't seem to be bothered by them.

And then there's the grocery shopping. My first trip was a bit challenging - I sat in front of the milk section for several minutes trying to figure out which carton might be low fat. In the end I checked the nutrition facts - I couldn't tell what each number was associated with but I figured lower numbers meant lower fat so that's what I went with - when you buy products with no English description you have no idea if that carton of milk actually says "hormone infused goats milk" or something like that...

Speaking of food, I regularly burn dinner. My gas stove doesn't seem to have a low setting. I even burned the first thing I baked because I didn't realize the temperature settings were in Celsius (big difference)...

It will be awhile before everything is settled but we're getting there...