Our Apartment

I'm currently sitting at my own desk from Utah in my own chair and looking at my own computer monitor. It seems huge cuz I've been using my iphone and my 11" laptop for most of this summer! Our shipment of stuff arrived four days ago and it's been like Christmas over here...lots of packages to open with familiar surprises inside! Pretty great!

At long last I will post pictures of where we're living.

First, here's a shot of some of the cash it took to move in. Nearly everything (except for at grocery stores) is done on a cash basis. To move into our apartment it cost one month's rent (about $1800USD), plus the last month's rent, plus the equivalent of one month's rent as a deposit, plus that same amount as an "agent's fee" commission. Then you times that amount by 8 for the exchange rate, and arrive at about $60000 MOP (Macau Patacas) in cash to move in. That is a wad of cash I tell you! Lucky for us Chad's employer paid it for us. :) (Don't be thinking we're in a palace due to the price - rents are just really expensive here.)

Before we got here, we had an apartment picked out and had chosen what we shipped here according to what would work in that apartment. We stayed at a hotel for a few days and then finally got to visit that apartment and meet the agent and owner in person. The bad news was it couldn't work for us - the agent told us the owner would remove whatever furniture we didn't want (we shipped our own) but the truth was that the owner was not willing to remove furniture. Here most apartments come furnished and landlords don't really want to remove the furniture they own because there's not a good resell market here - it's just not well organized and tough to resell your stuff. Also, there's no such thing as storage units here (as far as we know). Anyway, we found that a few days into our return to Macau we were in an expensive hotel with nowhere to move to. :( We moved to a cheaper hotel and Chad being the superman that he is got out there and found us an apartment, which is not easy because there is no apartment management office you just walk right up to or comprehensive list of what's out there. We were blessed to work with a helpful agent who found us an apartment in the same complex as the other one, and it is the best place in Macau to live if you've got kids. It's down at the southernmost part of Macau, near the beach and surrounded by trees instead of people and cars. :) It's been kind of tough adjusting to the apartment because we have been soooo spoiled in America, but it's meeting our needs and there are some great things about it. Anyway, after that monologue, here are pictures:

This is the living room, obviously. These pictures are all of the apartment before our shipment got here, so I'll have to post more later. I love that there's a balcony in this apartment. I just really love being able to go stand outside if I want to.

Here's the kitchen. Honestly I love the bright red drawers. They're awesome! I also LOVE that the kitchen isn't separated from the rest of the house by a door like in most apartments.

Here's me being domestic (no dishwasher).

And there's Claire taking a nap.

And there's Claire exploring the new cupboards.

Here's the laundry, which is twice the size of what you see in the picture - a great size and we're lucky it's that way - lots are much smaller and people's clothing has to be hung in bedrooms or the living room to dry (no dryer).

Here's the view from the laundry/kitchen window. Out there are lots of wooded areas to run/hike in. On the sill outside are some raspberry shoots we brought from home. Let's take a closer look:

It's still alive right now, though we fear that it won't make it a whole year because of the heat. I'm glad we're trying though. :) We looove our raspberry bush in Utah. I have read there's a tropical raspberry bush, so maybe we can get our hands on one of those.

This is our office - much more full now than in this picture.

This was Claire's first little bedroom. This is an awesome big closet off of the office. I'm really thankful we'll have this storage space here.  

Here's the girls' room. Claire's in here now too in a playpen. We'll see how that works out long term.

This is the bathroom in the master bedroom.

The funny thing about this bathroom is that it's all encased in glass. For the first while the doorknob to our bedroom was broken and the door wouldn't stay shut - so people could see you doing your thing from the kitchen. Nice!

Here's what these apartments look like on the outside.

Here's the courtyard outside.

One of the best things about living here is that we've already found lots of friends who speak English. It's been really fun for the girls (and for me).

Claire thinks chalk doesn't taste too bad.

Here's Jozie and some friends in the pool. We love that there's a swimming pool here we can go to all the time.

This isn't a great picture but it's the bus stop by our house. We've gotten pretty good at riding the bus, although we've got a car now and that's better (we're driving on the left now!).

The beach is seriously a five minute walk from our house. Awesome, right?

The water and sand are dark from silt (at least that's what we're told...). Still fun to play in!

Love this bum.

There's a sailing club here. I hope we're able to do some of this while we're here. Gotta figure out how to make that happen.

This is from one of my Saturday morning runs - the day after a typhoon so the water was more crazy than normal.

Cool running path. I've got more from other Saturdays I'll put up sometime.

Anyway, things are getting settled and more normal around here, but man I tell you moving to another country really makes things crazy for a while! We've learned so much though and the adventure is good for us. Feeling blessed.