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| The kitchen, before I moved in. |
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| The kitchen |
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| The kitchen now. More cluttered too, but more homely...:) |
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| The kitchen |
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| The corridor before |
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| The corridor after. Less lurid yellow |
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| Living room before. |
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| Living room before |
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| Living room before |
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| Living room after |
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| Living room after |
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| Living room after. |
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| The 'green' bedroom before. |
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| Now an open office attached to the living room. |
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| The 'green' room after. Funny thing is we still call this the green room...:) |
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| Finishing up the trim.. |
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| Painting the stair rail was such a pain in the ass. Particularly because the previous folks had been super sloppy with the paint. We debated painting the whole railing white, but we both love the wood look. So it still has sloppy paint on some of the wood areas, but at least the spindles are looking cleaner! |
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| Poor tortured Brody. We put the chair on the bed to stop it scratching the floor while we finished up the office, but he wanted his bed back.... |
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| The finished living room. New front door to hopefully come in the summer. We had to replace the screen door anyway this summer, so are thinking we'll just get a new door at the same time. The blue one is so beaten up, with dents, scratches and badly filled holes, we'd originally thought to paint and refinish it, but we realized even after we'd done that it'd probably still look like crap, and it'd be so nice to have a little window in the door there... |
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| Finished living room. Note the new ceiling fans. An unauthorized purchase, but i' m so glad he did. The old ones were bronze and faux wood, pretty tacky. These look pretty awesome and are better sized for the room. We have the fans going full time in the summer, so i'm looking forward to larger fans! |
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| Looking through the new open hallway. |
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| The office area. We put our old couch in there to make it more cozy (and moved Brandon's grandma's clock into an area it was less likely to get bumped). Much better - and the ceiling fan matches the living room! |
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| The office. |
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| We scored a new carpet for $31 on Zulily. Barkley was being helpful. We hadn't even got it into position before she took up hers and rolled around, wiping her less than clean fur all over it...... |
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| Xiamen University - the old campus |
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| Xiamen University, the old campus. |
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| Xiamen University, building where all the students have their graduation photo taken in front of. |
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| My tour guides around the campus |
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| Heading out to Gulangyu Island off Xiamen |
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| Crushing pearls into powder, renowned for curing all ills. |
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| Gulangyu Island |
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| Pictures made entirely of fish bones |
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| Pictures made entirely of fish bones |
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| Temple |
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| A sign often found in Chinese homes during Mao's tenure. |
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| Flowers outside an art museum |
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| Gulangyu Island |
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| Highest point on the island |
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| Beach at Gulangyu, Xiamen in the background |
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| Xiamen in the background. |
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| My guides around Xiamen |
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| Crabs at the fishmarket |
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| Choose your own mussels! |
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| Xiamen. |
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| My spaceship toilet. Most toilets in China were pit toilets, but this one hotel went fancy! |
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| Make up the room or don't bother.... |
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| Qingdao, stop number two. Beautiful boardwalk, 40km long. |
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| Beach #1 in Qingdao |
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| My chair. |
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| Teahouse on the Qingdao boardwalk |
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| Having tea with Fei (school director) on the boardwalk |
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| Sunrise over Qingdao. |
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| Shanghai the last stop on the tour! Nanjing Road, highly touristy, but fun! |
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| Dim sum! |
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| Dim sum! |
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| Lanterns |
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| Teahouse on a lake. |
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| Square in Nanjing Road |
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| Nanjing Road |
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| A little bit of tea! |
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| The Bund in Shanghai, in the rain! |
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| Writing poems using water in a local park in Shanghai |
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| Tai Chi and Square Dancing in Shanghai. |
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| Shanghai. |
