Home sweet home

David and I have now moved all our new furniture into the apartment we’ve been living in for ten months, and we’re really enjoying the change! We cleaned out both of the bedrooms—rediscovering wedding presents we’d forgotten about (you can only use so many sets of dishes at once!)—and set up both beds. I’m still not sure where to put all those extra dishes still in their boxes, but I suppose I’ll find a place. I really wish we had cupboards in the kitchen!

So far this week, the carpenter has come several times to fix our bed, which is just slightly too small for the mattress but somehow fits it anyway; put a new lock on our front door (which we just did a few months ago) because the key had broken in the lock; and repair our curtain rod in the living room, the bracket of which had come out of the wall. (Our walls are made of pseudo-brick and crumble far too easily. Anything heavy set on a nail just pulls the nail/screw right out of the wall, breaking the wall with it!)

Today the electrician, Alex, came to assess our electrical problems—the ones we’d been ignoring for months since we thought we’d be leaving soon anyway. These include (4) burned out incandescent lights that will probably need new sockets, (3) burned out fluorescent lights, and (4) burned out electrical outlets. And he’s going to install ceiling fans in our bedrooms. Yes!

As I write this, David is in town getting cable to hang up curtains in our bedroom windows, which right now just have sheets draped over the top louvers, and our toilet and bath rooms. I’ve hung up our new drapes in the living room—at least on the one curtain rod that wasn’t broken. (We had sheers hanging before, and they were beautiful, but they weren’t very private, and the morning sun poured into the living room, making it an oven all day.)

Our fridge is a wonder, and I am thankful for the investment we made in it! No more spending hours chipping away ice so that we can get the freezer open—or shut!

And now that we have a hutch for our dishes, we have space on the bookshelf (the dishes’ last home) for all of David’s books that have been sitting on the floor of our bedroom for the past ten months. The room looks so much less cluttered now!

Although we still have no running water nor any hope of every having any, our friend gave us a large water container (about the size of a curbside trash can in the U.S.), so we’re hoping to make it through the dry season without too much trouble this year.

So now that we’ve decided to stay here, and the repairs are underway, this house is beginning to feel more like home. We still need to do something about shelves and cupboards in the kitchen, and I’m hoping to get some baby things for the other bedroom, but all in all, I’m happy with the progress we’ve made this week!

Photos of our flat will be on Flickr by the end of today! (My handle is SaralynnNG.)