Adventures in our new house

Even in a house of our own, we have been experiencing a great deal of culture as we get settled. 

As part of our rental agreement the owners installed safety bars on all the windows (common on most homes).  At the same time we ordered screens to be made, but forgot to ask that the bars be installed an inch inside the window sill.  This resulted in needed adjustments for the screens to cover gaps around many edges.  The screen worker thankfully was willing to add molding to the edges, closing the gaps, and actually dressing them up a little.  Another hang up with the screens was the material the worker chose was neon green.  In the end we learned in a case such as this people typically buy the materials themselves and just have a worker build it.  As per John’s idea, we spray painted the screen material black, which now looks great and didn’t clog all the little holes!

Screens on door, window, and ventilation holes!

 Our landlords also decided to fill in the back part of the property, to enable adding on to the house at a later time.  For the past two weeks our front yard has been full of rocks, sand, and ten truckloads of dirt.  All of the work has been done with shovels and wheelbarrows. 



Truck load #6.
I woke up from a nap to find dirt being delivered next to my clean laundry drying in the yard.



Caedmon is my helper.  He is ready to get involved in just about any work taking place!

John is also becoming quite the home-fixer-upper.  He installed a knife rack, a curtain rod, and a shower head.  This all required drilling into our brick walls.  The shower is a pleasure to use.  Unfortunately the water flow in our complex isn’t strong, so during high water usage times it is impossible to use the shower.  I have learned the mornings, especially on Sunday, are not a time to depend on water as occasionally there isn’t any at all. 

In the kitchen I was using a two burner stove barrowed from our host family.  Last week their stove broke.  We returned their extra one and bought a one burner stove.  Why?  Because we had a real oven on order.

The one burner stove was quite nice, for awhile, as it opened up a little counter space.

 

Our new oven!!!

The biggest cultural adventure recently has been with our neighbors.  Neighborhood kids just come right in when we leave our door open.  Then they, and even the adults who usually wait to be invited in, look through our stuff that is still piled all over the floor, some even still in boxes.  In addition, we’ve had multiple pieces of furniture delivered. which is always accompanied by neighbors and friends asking, “How much did you pay?”  This is a common question here and not at all taboo to ask, even in regards to salary, rent, or anything purchased.  It is a very difficult question for me to field.  It would very rarely be asked in our home culture and I feel we are constantly battling the image of rich-white-westerns.  Hopefully a lot of those questions will die down once we are more settled. 

Neighborhood kids, and a mother, playing with the boys. 

 

For now we await some additional furniture to finish unpacking and gain a little more order in the house!

A kitchen cabinet, still not perfectly placed, but with lots of storage!  Each piece of furniture requires us to be creative in arranging rooms to take advantage of the space we do have.