We Are Losing Our Home

In December a new subway stop is opening about 400m from our front gate. This subway will make travel to Beijing substantially cheaper and easier. That is the good news. The bad news is that our property has quickly become more valuable than the purpose for which we are using it. Our operation would be fine anywhere, but apartments on our site would bring a high price. Also, our immediate concern is that the road outside our gate needs to be widened for the potential increase in traffic. Currently, our kitchen sink is about 6 feet from the road, so this means our entire house is going to be bulldozed. They said this demolition will happen at the end of May.

If you look at my sketch drawing everything in red is coming down and all of the black buildings will remain. All of the apartments the kids live in will remain, but 6 apartments worth of leadership staff housing is coming down in May. The catch-22 is that our whole outfit will probably be asked/forced to move in the not too distant future. They have said 1-2 years until this move, but one thing we have learned about living in China is that whatever you are told today will not be what you are told tomorrow. Either way we need a place to live - and we don't want to build a garbage apartment and then we end up staying here longer than 2 years.

The silver lining in this cloud is 1) our current apartment should be bulldozed anyway - the quality is awful, and 2) a new family moved to our orphanage last week and the husband is a general contractor. His timing is perfect! We are going to begin turning 3 unused classrooms and storage rooms into apartments immediately.