One of my trade offs for not traveling during China National Holiday was knowing that if I didn't take the time to nest and put some time and work into my apartment now, that it would be at least another month until I found the time to do it. The weeks following October break will be busy with grades, conferences, and really getting into a good groove for second quarter. There is nothing I love more than moving into a new place and making it mine. It is usually where most of my focus is in new seasons of life. Any of you who have been dragged around antique stores with me in St. Louis know just how much I love the collecting and building part of creating my home. In fact, one of the toughest parts of this move was deciding which pieces of art to part with and what I would allow myself to hold onto for the future "what ifs." :) It might surprise you then, that in my two months in Hangzhou, I have purchased very little for my new place. I have focused so heavily on getting settled into my classroom and other new routines that creating a workable home space fell to the wayside. It began to wear on me towards the end of September and I knew I wouldn't be completely happy in my new place until I invested some time and money into it. Leaving behind artwork, travel treasures, and the things that make your house a home leaves a lot of room to start over with. I think in some ways, I have felt overwhelmed by the process. Now, I'll be honest, even in the States, I'm not a huge IKEA fan. In most cases, I loathe mass produced anything. I have much too great a love of finding unique pieces that have a story behind their creation. So, you might ask, why IKEA? Well, for one- I'm in China, and IKEA is easy. :) It's a one stop shop to get practical things: linens, candles, kitchen supplies, furniture, etc. And because I hadn't had the "IKEA China experience" (which I was assured was a must have experience), I decided to brave it over the holiday break. I believe several IKEA trips have happened upon my colleagues in our 8 weeks here, however, I purposefully stepped aside assuring them that it was an experience I was willing to miss. However, it came down to the deciding factor that I most especially wanted a couch that led me to consider making the trek there. We were provided with a generous furnished apartment, however, I had been eyeing a specific IKEA couch for a while now and knew I'd feel a little bit more at home in having something I chose myself. And so the IKEA adventures began. I must tell you that prior to even arriving in China, I was warned by my grade level teammates that there are two experiences: Shopping at IKEA and Shopping at IKEA in China. I brushed the comments away and laughed. I find IKEA overwhelming in the States anyway, so I wasn't expecting that a China experience would be all that different. And I would be wrong. Danielle was also in the mix for a couch, so we decided to brave it the first Sunday of our break to get it over with. By this point, I'd been given enough detailed run downs of previous IKEA trips to expect it to be an all day affair. Danielle and I met and hopped the bus to the Metro stop and rode the Metro to IKEA. I have a tendency to lose track of time when given conversation opportunities, but I believe it took us about an hour to get there. Danielle is a planner (I am not) so she mapped out the time frame of how long it would take us to get lunch before we started shopping. She estimated that by the time we got off the Metro, stood in line and found a place to eat that it would be another hour before we started shopping. I laughed at her. But guess who knew what she was talking about? Because, GOOD GRIEF SO MANY PEOPLE. I think our first great mistake was deciding to shop at Ikea, in China, during a Chinese National Holiday. People were out in full force and I was amazed at the crowds. I wish I had thought to take pictures sooner in the trip but I think for the good first hour I was lost in a daze. We made it through the lunch line, found a Chinese couple who were gracious enough to let us share a table with them, and ate before venturing out on our shopping adventures. Pretty early on in the trip, my motto became, "If you like it, buy it, because you are NEVER coming back here." The first part of our shopping adventure was the showroom (which I found out afterwards that you can actually skip). When my teammates were preparing me for my IKEA trip, they said, "There are two reasons why Chinese locals go to IKEA: to eat and to sleep." And I thought they were kidding. You all. I do not have sufficient enough evidence to show you the mayhem of the IKEA showroom. I do have a handful of photos (below), but even they do not accurately depict the immense amount of people. sleeping. UNDER THE COVERS. of the IKEA showroom. If you look closely in some of these photos, you can see the show beds are unmade.....Because at some point a young couple put their baby down for a nap there ....or an older gentlemen decided to take an afternoon snooze just for the heck of it while his family shopped. Perhaps the funniest part of the trip actually amounted to couch shopping. This is probably the first experience of my adult life where I saw a piece of furniture I liked (kindly asking a couple to move so I could sit on it for two minutes) wrote down the number, and left without a second glance. The showrooms were overflowing with people and luckily, I had made up my mind that it wasn't the time to be indecisive. On to the next! We made it out of the showrooms, where the madness continued. Only this time, there were just as many people, but now...they all had carts. At one point during our sweep through the kitchen aisles, there were so many people that Danielle got stuck in a corner about 2 yards directly in front of me. I kept trying to say her name, but the crowd of people cutting her off and whipping by her was so ridiculous that she didn't hear me. She kept turning around to try to place me, which finally led me to burst with laughter. I had never seen anything like this. It was like Black Friday multiplied by 8. The rest of the shopping trip was a blur (until we hit the carpet showroom and Danielle had to talk me off the ledge of buying a Persian rug). At one point, Danielle looked at her watch and remarked on how late it was. I told her I didn't want to know a thing about the time- I'd rather live in the abyss of timelessness. :) Eventually, 8 hours after we walked in the store we walked back out. It was a maddening, albeit, amusing trip and we were tired. Our evening ended with a long train ride home (where I became best buds with not one, but TWO babies) and a standing room only bus ride that was so full of people that it didn't even matter if you held onto a hand rail because the wall of people around you could support you when the bus would inevitably come screeching to a halt. At one point, there had to have been over 200 of us on the city bus and again- you laugh. Because life is funny. All in all, I don't regret my IKEA trip. It makes for a good story and a heck of an interesting China experience. But I promise you: I won't be returning anytime soon. We survived. (That's my fake smile.)
5 Comments
Shirlee
10/14/2016 06:18:18 pm
Great blog. Now I am looking forward to the pictures of the couch you bought!!
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Michelle
10/14/2016 09:50:22 pm
I'm working on it! :)
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Anne
10/22/2016 06:07:52 pm
Hahahahaha! I wouldn't be able to make it 10 mins. Love the pictures!
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Aunt Barb
10/27/2016 07:25:20 am
Love reading your blogs, Michelle. This one was hilarious. Couldn't believe the photos. Wonder if anyone gets locked in...sleeping in one of the beds.
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11/4/2017 11:51:03 pm
Also, thanks for allowing for me to comment!
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AuthorMichelle is an expat and globetrotter, currently residing in Augsburg, Germany. Originally from the US, she has called Guam, China, and Germany home. Her passions include collecting children's picture books, reading, writing, traveling, and trying to remove coffee stains from freshly cleaned shirts. Archives
February 2022
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