Big bathroom tour

I haven't shown you much of my apartment, but today I have a photo of my large bathroom to show you. I also have a smaller bathroom attached to the master bedroom, but it's hard to take photos of that one due to its size.

It's common in China to have the washing machine in the bathroom since plumbing fixtures are available there. An alternate location for a washing machine is an enclosed balcony, but I don't have an enclosed balcony.

Once upon a time, I had to bring towels from America to use here. The ones available here were tiny; even the ones people used to dry off after a shower were no larger than a hand towel. Also, they had children's drawings on them, like bears or tulips or constellations, and the colors were hideous, in my opinion. Then one day I saw some good larger towels at Wal-Mart and bought them. But I got tired of pink, and Wal-Mart closed down. So when I saw these turquoise ones for sale at the Japanese home furnishing store called Nitori, I got them. 

There is a large hot water heater on the wall above the toilet. The sliding glass doors in the back enclose the shower area. 

I have a small cube-size clothes drier on a piece of furniture on the wall to the right that you can't see. Most people here don't have electric clothes driers, preferring to hang their clothes to dry. The clothes driers that are available are either small and minimally effective, or they are good and really expensive. I ordered mine directly from the factory since I couldn't find any in the stores. It takes 3-4 hours to dry a pair of jeans. But during rainy season, it could take 3-4 days to dry a pair of jeans, so the drier is still a better deal.

I like the brightness of this room. All my rooms have windows. 

That's the bathroom tour!

Welcome to my neighborhood

Here are a few shots of my front yard. When I bought the house, I painted the front door black. There isn't much siding, but what siding I have needed painting. My niece Hillary and her new husband Tim painted it for me one day while they were in town for my parents' anniversary party! I'm so glad. I have so many things that I need to do to the house, and not enough energy to tackle them all without some help. The front of the house looks so much better now. They also helped me add some topsoil to my front yard (it had some sunken patches), and they helped me plant grass seed which has successfully sprouted!

I want my yard to look as good as the neighbor's across the street. See the bird perched atop my brick mailbox? Life is good in the neighborhood!

Healthwise, I have been really dragging in the two months since I finished radiation. I hear it takes time to bounce back, but I really didn't think it would be this bad. I'm hoping I can get up off the sofa more and enjoy every day of this life the Lord has given me.

The yard boy

I was looking forward to having my own yard to tend to. But I had some nerve damage to my right shoulder during surgery, and I was told that I shouldn't mow my own yard for a year. Yikes! I'm not even planning to be here a year. Fortunately, my 17-year-old nephew, Nathan. was looking for part time work, so I hired him as my yard boy. Here he plants a crepe myrtle. Nathan will be a senior in high school this year. I'm so glad that he lives nearby, for many reasons!

I bought a house

I used to joke that one day I would retire from my overseas work and come back to the U.S. to live under an underpass. But I really wanted a house instead. I'm picky like that. And since my salary has not increased in twenty years, while everyone else's in America has, I wondered if I would be able to even afford a house if the current housing cost trends continued upwards between now and my retirement So I prayed and asked God what I should do.

I know some people who live overseas buy a house in America and rent it out while they are overseas. But I was never home long enough to work on buying a house (I usually only stay in the U.S. for two months at a time). But since I have medical issues, I am home much longer this time around. 

I looked at houses in the neighborhoods I liked, and they cost too much. My tastes always seem to be higher than my pocketbook can handle. 

But THEN, a house in a good neighborhood came up for sale. I knew the people moving out. They had to make a quick exit for personal reasons, and the house needed a lot of fixing up since many maintenance issues had been neglected for many years. So they were selling it for cheap. I found out about it before it was made public, and the neighbors wanted to give me the first shot at getting the house. Without their generosity, I wouldn't have succeeded in buying the house. Others could have bid more and were waiting to do so.

So I bought it.

And it is next door to my parents' house. :-) 

Doing the needed repairs myself (with the help of family and friends) means I could make it work. I got it back during the spring. I did a few weeks of repairs while recuperating from chemo, then I had surgery and radiation which put house repairs on the back burner. But I moved into the one bedroom that was move-in ready, and Mimi and I live in the house already.

Some may wonder why a cancer patient would invest in a house since life is so uncertain. But life is uncertain for all of us, and we still buy and sell and carry on with our lives. No one knows if they will wake up the morning after they sign their housing paperwork. Romans 8:28 is at work in my life. The year in America has some good purposes for my life.