We are back from a wonderful vacation in Finland and slowly but surely adjusting to Autumn in Shanghai. The last couple of weeks have been busy with getting ready for school, signing up for after school activities (gymnastics, soccer and swimming) and in general, settling back into familiar routines.

One of my quarterly routines has been to change the air filters around the house. When we moved in, there were no filters installed but just mesh liners around the ventilation intakes, which didn't look very effective to us. We decided to keep the windows shut and stocked up on 3M filters during a trip to Mpls. We also bought two free standing Honeywell units in order to clean up the inside air. Being on the 19th floor we figured we wouldn't get as much of the exhaust and dust in the air as the lower levels so the ceiling filters plus the floor unit combos should be adequate. 

So after we returned from our vacation I climbed up to change the filter in our study. Either the ayi has taken up on smoking while we were gone or I will need to revisit the filter replacing schedule...
   

Seriously, this is just gross. But at least it's not sitting in our lungs. Well, not all of it anyways.