Housing Update

We haven’t signed the contract quite yet and we won’t be able to move in until the end of March, but it would appear that (after a full month of looking) we’ve finally secured a new place to live. We’re having a great time living with Arthur and Jojanneke, but we’re excited to have our own place for the first time since November. The new place is absolutely gorgeous and far nicer than we expected to have. You enter though a very nice gate into a covered car port with room for two cars. Off of the small front porch there’s a living room that leads to a hallway with two bedrooms on it, ending in a dining room attached to the kitchen. Finally, there’s a small, enclosed outdoor space off the back where the laundry and such happens. The inside has been very well cared for and is very nice. The place has, if you can believe it, a generator, a reserve water tank and pump, and (wait for it…) air conditioners! These things can’t, of course, keep out all of the daily difficulties here, but should help make some things much, much easier. The water tank and pump are a huge labor savers and the generator is really nice because I expect to work from home quite a bit. The car port is handy (even though we don’t expect to get a car) because will make a nice, large play space for David.

Because there were very few apartments available in the city center in our price range we ended up in the Bairro Popular, after all (where we are staying now and where we stayed in January 2006). The upside of the location is that daily life here is much slower paced and the people are more open than in the city -- we’ll have a much better chance to get to know our neighbors and become a part of our little surrounding community. The difference between the Bairro Popular and the other neighborhood we were looking at, Vila Alice, is much akin to the difference between the suburbs and the city in the US. The benefit to living in Vila Alice would have been the in-town location for meetings. Fortunately, however, the house is on the city-side edge of the bairro making transit to and from the city easier than our current location. We’ll be a 5 minute walk from a major road and from there can be in the city with one minibus ride. We’re also glad that we’re still in the same neighborhood as Arthur and Jojanneke, so that hopefully we can continue to see them regularly.