Apartment Searching

We arrived safely in Comas on Thursday night and have had a packed last five days of getting to know the neighborhood, the church, the people working with the savings and credit (SCA) groups, the food, the transportation, etc etc etc. Would have loved to give a little update sooner, but we haven't had much access to the internet. There are many things I'd love to write about, but the thing most on my mind right now is finding an apartment. So here you have it.

Apartment Searching

Something that at first was completely daunting, then just tiring and difficult, is now my favorite thing to do in Comas. The thought of searching for an apartment in a country (and continent!) that you’ve never even visited before with language skills that leave something to be desired was a bit overwhelming before we arrived here. On Saturday, Roberto picked us up in a borrowed car to drive around the neighborhood looking for an apartment. There is no craigslist here, no newspaper listing, nor a place to go to find out about all of the vacant apartments. You search by driving or walking around the neighborhood looking for hand-written signs in the windows or doors.

Once Steve and I figured out how the system worked, we decided to venture out on our own and walk the neighborhood on Sunday to see if we could find more options. There is a street a bit north of the church that reminded us a little bit of home. Maybe just because there are a lot of people and a lot of food? Anita, a woman working with the savings and credit groups also lives over there and we wanted to be close to her, too. Either way we wanted to see if we could find an apartment closer to there. As we walked the neighborhood a woman yelled to us from the second floor of a house under construction. She was in the savings group that we had visited the previous night and asked if we were looking for someone. We told her we were searching for an apartment. She told us we were looking in the wrong area, that her street wasn’t safe, and offered to walk with us to a better area to look. Five or ten minutes after we parted ways with her we heard someone yelling after us and turned to see her running to catch us. On her walk home she’d noticed a sign and wanted to take us to see it. So the three of us went up to see an apartment. As we followed behind the owner and her, she turned around quickly and said seriously, “You are my family”. I’m pretty sure we weren’t going to fool the owner into thinking that we were related, but it was sweet anyway.

Turned out to not be a great apartment. Once we were back on the street with the door closed behind us, she turned to us, and in English, said “I don’t like it”. That probably doesn’t sound funny to you, but we find it hilarious every time someone whips some English phrase out of nowhere when we didn’t know they knew any English at all.

So that was Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday we also walked the neighborhood looking for apartments. Yesterday we decided that maybe the best way to find one was not even to look for signs, but to just asked people on the street, shop owners, etc. So we did. And we ended up meeting a lot of people! This must be the easiest place in the world to meet people. We’re leaning toward a first floor apartment that we saw on Saturday for that reason. We want to be part of this community and know that some of that is just being on the street.

So we’ll let you know how it goes with this one! Today we are hopefully going to see it again and see if we can negotiate some improvements. By “we” I mean our friend Roberto, one of the pastors of the church, who has worked in the business world for many years and is just a kind, likeable, and funny man. He will negotiate on our behalf. There are many other things I could write about right now. This has been a packed last five days. But that will have to wait until another day. Pictures to come soon!

Much love.