House Hunting

Never ever ever take leasing offices for granted. Or real estate agents. Or classified ads. Or For Sale/Rent signs. They are all things that Blake and I wished for this past week as we searched for a place to live. Here's what we did:

1. Tuesday evening: Drive around town to see what neighborhoods we might want to look in. We decided to focus our attention on the grocery store and work out from there.

2. Wednesday morning: Blake and I park the van at the grocery store and start wondering. We ask random people and store owners (in Arabic, don't forget!) if they know if any places that are for rent. We saw two. The first was tiny. The second had the kitchen in the back of the apartment after the master bedroom as if they forgot to put it in the floorplan. It was a hundred degrees outside and because it's Ramadan, we couldn't drink water. We also spent 45 minutes talking to one guy who was telling us that no one in his neighborhood smokes "hashish" and that the people are "nishan". We weren't sure why he was telling us this because there was no places to rent around that. We go back to the house defeated.

3. Wednesday night (9-11 PM): We go out to a neighborhood farther away than we want and ask a night guardian if he knows anywhere for rent. He gets us into two places. One of them looks like a dormitory covered in tile, the other one is great and right next to the grocery store (more on this one later).

4. Thursday morning: We call the North African version of a real estate agent, or Simsar. He takes us to two places. One of them is 4 stories up and no elevator so that was out. The other was okay. We go back to the good apartment to see it in the daylight. We still like it alot but want to see other places.

5. Thursday afternoon: The Simsar takes us to six other places. There are some nice but small ones and some large but not nice ones. We decide that the apartment by the grocery store is the best.

6. Thursday night: We go to the apartment we like. It's actually a villa or a very large house. The family that owns it lives downstairs. We tell them we want to rent from them. They give us a good price because they like us. We go downstairs where we drink fresh squeezed juice and eat "smeeda" and chat about jobs/why we don't have children/internet and what's on tv. Then we go outside and sit with them while Blake gets money to pay a deposit. We tell them we'll move in between one week and a month and then say our goodbyes and the verbal contract is made!

So, we are the proud renters of a three bedroom, one bathroom, two salon, nice kitchen, and roof access top floor of a villa. The landlords are great and it is literally the closest place we could possibly live to the grocery store. Once we buy bikes, we will be 5 minutes away from pretty much everywhere important we want to go in town. It was a crazy experience, but in some ways it was fun, too!

This picture is a view of our new city from above. We move September 23rd. Gary and Bradyn are going this week to find a place and hopefully move the same day.

P.S. It's cool and rainy outside right now!