In the northern part of the city is a place called Tienmu. I've spoken about it before. It's a very relaxing place with no subway station, wide roads and parks, some great hiking (with monkeys!), and many wonderful restaurants.
Because of this many foreigners live there. Which is one reason why I never wanted to live there, because it's so expected. Even to this day most people will ask me "oh where do you live? Tienmu?" as if it's expected that all us foreigners must live there. So i never wanted to live there because i didn't want to be just another stereotypical foreigner.
As time goes by I have learned to appreciate Tienmu though and have even said to myself that eventually I'd like to live there. It's still not that time yet, as it is a rather inconvenient place, hard to get into the city, and an expensive place to live. However even knowing all this, a friend of mine said she had a connection for a very nice apartment that is opening up in a great area of Tienmu. So for the past few weeks I've been allowing myself to daydream about what it would be like to live there, being able to take my dog to the big park across the street, going for hikes in the mornings, all the restaurants i adore all being within walking distance...
But today I saw the place and while the location is pretty much perfect, the apartment is not as great as I wished it to be. It's still nice, but for me to spend the time, energy and money to move; and to be so far from the city and the projects I am working on; the apartment would have to be amazing for me to want to move there. Oh well.
That was ok, as one day I will live in Tienmu. However the real disappointment was the park. There is (or rather was) a huge park in Tienmu that i used to love. But recently they have been building a sports university there and it has been taking up and and more of the park. So the size of the park has shrunk dramatically. It made me a lot less interested in living in that particular area, and that is a true dagger to the heart.
In the picture you can see the buildings of the new university, and it's running track. This was a fun picture because you probably can't see it very well, but there are some people running in the grass area, pulling some exercise tires behind them. Well there were quite a few amateur photographers here with nice cameras who were practicing by taking pictures of these guys running. I sure showed them with my cell phone camera!
