a new home!

Good news - we found a new apartment and are signing a 12-month lease tomorrow evening! It's a very cute little two-bedroom townhouse in St. Albans, a nice neighborhood just north of the city center. It's close enough that we can still walk to the church and downtown, though it is a tad farther than our current place. The downsides are no dishwasher and no dryer, but it has a washing machine in the unit and we're hoping that our months of living with other people have so reformed our former slovenly dishwashing habits that we'll naturally clean up right after meals anyway. We'll see.

Here's a picture of the living room, looking into the teeny-tiny kitchen (on the left) and the short hallway by the entrance (on the right). The place is very nice and cozy, but this well-taken photo (the owner's) perhaps makes the place look a bit nicer than it actually is :)

Upstairs is a master bedroom of a decent size with built-in closets, which we hadn't found very often in our apartment hunting, which opens up onto a balcony that looks over the small patio area behind the flat (pictured, left). We especially like the tall ceilings, as they make a small place feel larger. On the other side of the stairway is a small bedroom that would work best as an office, and a little bathroom in the middle with green walls and blue countertop in the sink area, which is weird.

If all goes well, we should move in next Sunday or Monday. The big question now is what to do with our belongings - we can borrow a couple of mattresses and some dishes and maybe an old couch from the church, but of course we'd really like to have our stuff to make it feel like home. The problem here is cost - we've just recently discovered just how expensive it is to ship a household of stuff (even a small household like ours) overseas, especially when we'd also need to send one of us back to the U.S. for a couple of weeks to sift through the boxes and figure out what to send and what to store.

We're a bit overwhelmed lately, but we've committed to this grand faith experiment by deciding to stay in New Zealand and look forward to discovering the creative and miraculous ways that things will work out in the end. I shared briefly during our church service this evening on how our most difficult experiences are also the best opportunities for faith and character development, so I suppose I'm now finding out if I actually believe that :)

If you want to see more details of our place, you can check out the TradeMe listing, though it will probably get removed soon by the owner.

So make your plans to come visit - we'll put you up in our place!

-Rachel