Negotiations

We decided on a house today. The way that housing works is that after you negotiate about the price you negotiate with the landlord  about all the furniture. The houses are furnished, but there is some flex room. We were fairly sure which house we wanted but had heard that this landlord was difficult to deal with and didn't speak English. Kind of a daunting combination for a couple of English-only Americans! But we went through our list of things we wanted and she agreed to all them. Kind of strange to tell someone you want bunkbeds for your kids rooms and then you don't pick them out. Some of the furniture we are going to pick out - we'll make a trip to the store with the landlord and she will agree or not to what we pick out (price-wise). Still strange, huh? Now mind you that we did all of this negotiating through one of the Chinese women that works at the company. No, scratch that, we would say, "we'd like 3 sets of bookshelves" then the two Chinese women would discuss it for quite some time and only occasionally asking us a clarifying question.We didn't really negotiate at all!  It felt a lot like we had a pitch-hitter negotiating for us!