Weird Key Obsession Leading to Moves

So I’m in a very odd situation right now, and will be leaving my cushy suburban home for a new place.

My host family (Bai and Liu) lives in a locked building on the 8^th floor. When I arrived there was no mention of how I would get in and out of the building. By the 2^nd day I came to the realization that no key was forthcoming. I asked about it. They said they didn’t have one for me. Due to the language barrier, I couldn’t explain that as a 30-something year old woman, I was not accustomed to the idea that I would have to have mom and dad buzz me in when I wanted to go anywhere, and who knows if they would be here when I came back?

Then an additional complication arose, that my tutor is actually a graduate student at Beijing Normal University and therefore does not have an office. So we’re needing to do our sessions (6-hours a day mind you…more on that later) in the apartment otherwise we’re banished to the nearest kafeiguan (coffee shop). The family definitely didn’t like that. They said we couldn’t have our sessions here because they were too busy and wouldn’t be around all the time, and without a key they would have to be around.

So we told Lotus Study (https://www.lotusstudy.com) about the situation to see if we could resolve it (i.e., get me a key so I wasn’t a prisoner in their home and so I had a place to do my tutoring). In the end they wouldn’t give me a key or agree to let me have my tutoring sessions here, even knowing that it would necessitate me leaving (I mean hello? I’m 30+ and if I’m living with you presumably you’d give me a key). From conversations I had, I get the impression that they might have been willing to give me a key, but they don’t trust my tutor (which is weird no?).

As a result, I will be leaving these nice people in their very clean apartment (anyone who’s been to China can tell you how rare that is) tomorrow morning and moving in with a young couple with a 1-year old child. Frankly I really liked these folks – they were very kind and very happy people – and am in a lot of ways sad to go.

Here’s the good and the bad:

Good: new family isn’t in the boonies, they’re 10 minutes closer to the center of town, making transport much easier, and I shouldn’t have any problem getting a darn key to not feel like I’m in elementary school again

Bad: I have to adjust again to something entirely new and get to know new people once again, oh, and let’s pray the 1-year old isn’t a screamer.