Imagine the madness of outfitting an entire apartment in the space of one and a half hours. Now add to your image a supermarket that sells everything imaginable, one that could easily fit five Walmarts inside it and still have room to grow. If you have accurately imagined the above, you will understand what I went through today. We made it to Chengdu without incident and promptly were driven to our apartments. I am on the ninth floor of my apartment building, in a gigantic six-person apartment. I have the smallest room (which means the cheapest rent) which is passable but sadly lacks a desk. The other major drawback is that at this point, I have only managed to turn on the air conditioning in my room. As far as I know, everyone else has a heater that is working. Mine only blows out cold air! So after we made it to our apartments, we headed for Carrefour, the gigantic supermarket I alluded to earlier. If ever there were anything that was unbelievably overwhelming, this would be it. Aisles crowded with people and merchandise, innumerable brands and choices, countless products, multiple floors. In my mad dash around the store, I only managed to procure a fraction of what I actually need, which means I will be going shopping tomorrow too. The good news is that I found really awesome sheets and now have a mug, plate, and bowl. I think the mug is my favorite – it has one of those really fantastic pseudo-translations from Chinese to English, which could not have possibly been done by an English speaker; it proudly proclaims, “Dream of the candy.” So you want to know what China is like? For less than $30, I got a quilt cover, a bed sheet, two pillowcases, laundry detergent, a gigantic bottle of water, two clementines, a mug, a plate, and a bowl. UPDATE (The above was written yesterday): My heat is working! And we have hot water! I was still so cold though that I slept with two quilts, a heavy duty sleeping bags, woolen socks (borrowed from my roommate), and a sweater. Another room came up with the solution of all sleeping in the same bed (apparently they were very warm). I think I might buy a space heater. Pictures of the apartment are to come. I just haven’t taken any yet!