Talking About Housing

So, any way, today we are talking about housing, differences in housing between the United States and China. But first of all, I want to differentiate between the words "house" and "home" because they have a slightly different meaning. So a house is basically just refers to a physical object, a physical place where you sleep, where you shower, where you eat. 
But the word "home" has a stronger meaning. We have a phrase that goes "home is where the heart is". Home is where you really feel like your emotionally like spirtually at home. So like home could be anywhere the world for you. It's where you feel you're fit in. It's where maybe your family is, may be where your best friend is. So it's not necessarily the place that you sleep at night, it's where you feel like you're home.

A good sentence:
"Let's go check out that new apartment over on Riverside drive."
And I think we've talked about theis before, but to check out, to check something out means to go see it, to just see what it's like. You can use the phrase "over on" if you are from a location. For example, so let's say I'm at the store with a new friend and she says so where exactly do you live, then I would say somthing like oh, I live over on Jin tai avenue or over on Riverside drive. So you can use this "over on" phrase to refer to the street that you live on.

So a couple more things I wanna tell you about housing in the United States is that you pretty much have three options you can make. So you can either live A.in a city, B.in a suburbs or C.in a countryside. 
So the suburbs are basically just outside of the city. It's a residential area and it's a piece of land that has houses, that has been built by one company. So it's a bit part of the land and all of the houses basically locate exactly the same. And there's nothing really in that area besides houses, so you have to drive into the city or you have to drive out of the suburbs in order to find restaurants, grocery stores, your place of work, things like that.
Actually the countryside is a little bit different than the suburbs. You can say a suburb is one step closer to the city than the countryside is. So the countryside is basically mostly nature. You'll see very many trees in the suburbs and it'll just be almost identical looking houses on small part of land with small backyards. So this is a type of living environment that's quite unique to the United States. And also on that subject, people you know similar to China as I discovered, speaking with you guys on QQ, is that people don't really associate with their neighbors that much, especially in the suburbs everyone is pretty much just focus on doing their own thing and then driving out to their own work and hanging out with their own friends. Even if you live in the city in apartment complexes, people that live in rooms next to each other don't typically speak to each other. If you live like away long the country, it might be a little bit different. But for the most part, people don't associate with their neighbors all that much.
So that's kind of the basics of living in the city versus the suburbs and versus the countryside. Does anyone have any questions so far about housing in the United States?

I have a question for you guys. Our people are allowed to own land by themselves. Are you allowed to like hash out a plot of land and be like hey I wanna buy this section of land and it's gonna be mine? Because a lot of people in the United States they actually do that, like espeically in Northern Michigan people buy land. It's just land with nothing on it and they can do whatever they want with it. Because I know my QQ groups somebody said that the land is available to all the people and nobody can privately own a land. So you tell me could an average person own a piece of land in China. And I will read your comments.
Do they grow vegetables? Actually people that live out in the country don't necessarily grow their own vegetables. And believe it or not, plenty of people who live in the city do grow their own vegetables. They have like many gardens out of their balcony. That's of course, if they want to put in the effort. I know somebody who lives in New York City and on their balcony they're growing strawberries and watermelons.

I have another question for you guys. The geomantic omen, can you us tell me a little bit more about that? I heard that the geomantic omen is where you kinda of design the furniture in your house so that it's your geometric and symmetrical. I also heard that's good luck to have your house facing south so that it gets more sun. Would you have anything like the geomantic omen here in the States? But you know, sometimes people who like build their houses or something, they pay attention to where the sunlight is. For example, maybe they want their bedroom to be full of sunlight in the morning so that it's easier for them to wake up naturally. So basically in one of my QQ groups, somebody told me about something called "the geomantic omen" and that means that if you set up the furniture and the decorations in your house geometrically.
And symmetrical means it looks the same on this side and it does on another side. So everything is even. And that can bring you good luck.

For me if I'm looking for a place to live, I want to make sure there's a place that I can wash my clothes that includes a washer and a dryer. That it is someplace in the community that has a lot of diversity. So about diversity, I mean people from different cultures with different ides, a place that's pretty warm that doesn't get extremely cold in the winter time, a place that is better off to have company over, and lastly a place that I can afford. That is really important when it comes to figuring out where you want to live. So what about you guys? What kind of factors are the most important for you if you look for a place to live?

One more question for you guys actually. Would you rather move into a place that is furnished or unfurnished? Furnished means that it already has furniture like it already has a bed, tables, chairs, sofa. Unfurnished means that it's completely empty. It only has rooms and you can put whatever furniture you want. So you can design it yourself.
As for me, I would choose furnished simply because I'm a bit lazy when it comes to moving furniture. And I kinda want to move around a lot so I would choose something that's furnished, but I would decorate the walls, maybe with paintings or posters or something like that. Cause moving big furniture can kinda be a lot of work.