January 10, 2017 - My New Home
Living out of a suitcase is frustrating. You cannot imagine how good I felt to know my things are out of suitcases and in a real closet. Yes, I finally found a place to live. This is one of my most pleasant memories of returning to Bolivia. On Tuesday, July 5, I moved into my new apartment, a place I still love to this day.
I started looking for places to live in
March. My friend, Carmen, took me to see
several places when I came to visit in March and then hooked me up with a real
estate agent, named Ximena. Ximena took
me to four or five places in March and got a feel of what I wanted and where I
wanted to live. My first afternoon back,
after my exhausting trip here, Ximena took me to a very nice place on the First
Ring, near the Cemetery. It was a
beautiful place. The only thing I did
not like about it was that it was on the opposite side of the Plaza from where I
wanted to be.
Monday July 4, she took me to see two more
places. I was excited about the first
because it was four blocks from the plaza and two blocks from a nice market area,
Siete Calles. But I was quickly
disappointed. The living room had a big
pipe in the wall for air conditioning and it could not be removed. The windows in the living were covered with
newspaper because you could see the entire apartment from those windows; so no
running around in my underwear there.
Then she took me to a building near the Plaza Blacut, just two blocks from where I was staying at the New Tribes Mission House on the Plaza Blacut. I knew the area. I had been out exploring it for three days and knew it a little from when I lived here in the 80s. A very nice neighborhood. When I walked in, I knew immediately that this was my new home. The electricity was off and we were looking at it with our phone lights, but I could tell it was beautiful. It is not big, just four rooms: kitchen, living, bath, and bedrooms. But it is what I needed.
Tuesday evening, I met Ximena and Alexandra,
the owner of the apartment, at a notary to make it official. Then we went to the apartment, where I paid
and got my keys. In Bolivia, I pay the
first month rent, two months’ rent as a security, and the real estate agent
gets the equivalent of a month. So I
paid for four months’ rent and was broke for a bit.
I walked over to the mission house and paid
for my five days there. I took a taxi
the five blocks with all my things, threw them in the apartment, and went for
food. I went back to my chicken place,
Chicken Kingdom, but brought my food home.
The lights were still off so I ate by computer light.
When I awoke this morning, my lights were still off. I had to go to the Plaza to order a Wi-Fi connection, so I decided I would figure it out after I got back. The deposit and first month of Wi-Fi cost a little less than $100. When I got back my lights were working and a little while later the Wi-Fi was installed.
When I wrote this, I was sitting in my
living room with all four windows open to the 65 degree breezes and writing
you. Though today, rewriting this blog,
I am in Texas and it is 30 degrees outside.
I miss my little apartment, surrounded by a beautiful neighborhood. A normal day has a nice breeze blowing
through my apartment.
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