This is my first entry that hasn't been back-blogged. So I finally get to tell you what I've been up to since our arrival.

The apartment : is nice. No one-bedrooms were available, so they gave us a two-bed for the same price. So Zoey has her own room. It is fully furnished and works like a hotel, except there's no maid. I really like it.

The town : is interesting. There is no nice part of town, and there is no bad part of town. It is a patchwork quilt of old and new, mixed together. Every block is different. We've been house hunting. We got into our apartment at noon, were fed and had gone for groceries by two, and by three p. m. we were out touring houses with our realtor, Kevin. (we don't waste time!) It was really nice to have someone we had been working with for a month. We had a list of places we wanted to see the first day. We toured three houses : two we had chosen and one that had been on the market awhile, but had just reduced into our price range that morning. We were looking for a fixer, so looking at our two choices was kind of a let down. The third, our realtor's choice, looked like a palace compared to the other two.

We toured houses for the next two afternoons. Friday afternoon, we had narrowed our search down to two we had seen the first day : a fixer and the realtor's choice. We decided to put an offer down on the ready one. As of today, we have everything setup to start buying it. After agreeing to sell my soul to the bank, it will be MINE :)

Being new to the area made us think it might be hard to choose an area. But we had a really fantastic realtor whom gave us the insider's scoop on all the areas. We also mentioned that we wanted 5-10yr resale value, so that helped keep us out of some of the iffier areas of town. I'm confident that we're buying in a safe neighborhood. If the house passes all inspections, we should be in by Dec. 15.