We're MOVING!

Friday our landlord showed up unexpectedly and asked us how things were going and if we were going to sign another year lease with him. We hadn't really talked about it so we started to as he and our helper chatted away. The more we thought the more we decided to take a few days to look. We recently made the office into Elijah's room and for right now the kids need their own rooms. I will eventually need a room to home school and lately Todd has been spending a lot of time doing translation. With using our dining room table as a desk/study area the kids are too much of a distraction so we put our desk in our bedroom so he can shut the door. Since our lease is up around Todd's birthday we decided we either need to move now or next year. We really could use 4 bedrooms or a 3 bedroom apartment that we could divide part of a room.

Our former team mates are moving to another city in August so they have a 4 bedroom apartment a block away from us. We REALLY love our home. We love the location, the scenery, the things available around us - 3 grocery stores within 1.5 block, the community feel, the park beside us, and so on. So we have keys to our friend's apartment since they are in America right now and we looked at their place. That afternoon Todd went to a real estate agent to see if there were any 4 bedroom apartments in the area we currently live. He was able to see one but it wasn't in our neighborhood. Then Saturday as a family we saw 3 and the more we saw apartments and their locations the more we like our current one and our friends apartment 1 block away looked better and better. This apartment is convenient, the the same neighborhood we are use to, has good buses, and so on but we just were not a fan of it for some reason. It didn't feel like home to use and there were some things about it we would be giving up.

It ends up Todd saw a few more 3 bedroom apartments since we realized that 4 bedrooms are RARE. So we went again to our friends apartment to measure and look around. But we still were not sure about it. We felt like we were defaulting to it. So as a last resort Todd went out yesterday and saw another apartment and then was told about another one. As a family last night we went to check it out. Let me just say that places here are not what we would vision in America. So we figured after looking at various places we had a few things that were musts in the apartment but we knew that we would also have to sacrifice other things. But this place we would only have to sacrifice 1 thing. Location. We went to this apartment complex (this place is so big and not all of the buildings are built yet and if it was in America it would probably have it's own zip code.) It is located a little ways out from the rest of town but it feels like you step out of China. It looks like a really nice place in America. I could go on and on but if you only knew what it was like here, you would feel the same way.

We decided today after going again and searching out the surround area that we are giving the location we are currently. The amazing thing about these apartments is that they are cheaper/same price of what we currently are in and the ones we are looking at. It is cheaper because it is a little far away from the main center of town.

So after 4.5 days we have seen close to 10 places and found one to move into. We hadn't planned on moving so it is a little shocking to us to look and find so quickly. Now the fun job of packing and moving. :)

pictures: these are a few from across the street that Todd took when he went out on his bike. We think that there are about 30 buildings so far, their plan is to have 100.