LifeInContrast.com

(Video: The view from the balcony of our new house)

Hello friends – we’re still alive! Apologies for the lack of communication, we’ve been very busy this week. We finally found a house and moved in on Monday after the landlord tiled the upstairs and painted the walls. The balcony has a great little view of the very green valley below, including some rice paddies and houses being built. It’s in a relatively quiet neighborhood in the hills above Bandung, and the temperature is a bit cooler than the rest of the city, even “cold” at night. That said, the house is a lot “rougher” than most houses in the United States. However, the total rent for all 12 months is about $1400 USD.

The first night was kind of rough. I had a slight fever from eating some fried street food that disagreed with me. We had no pillows and only two fitted sheets for the bed. Apparently they don’t sell flat sheets anywhere here – no one knows where to get them. We also did not have a usable bathroom, since it was being renovated and was all torn up. We had to pee in the bushes outside. Fun stuff. We bought a water heater and western toilet (since most houses in Indonesia do not have them) and had a local handyman install them. He also re-tiled the bathroom, painted it, and replaced the ceiling. It cost us roughly $260 USD to renovate our bathroom, including the appliances and labor. Of course our water heater isn’t working currently…

Right now I’m sitting on our balcony at night, watching a lightning storm and listening to cicadas. It just finished raining. We’ll go watch a soccer match in a few hours at a café. We’ve made some friends and identified the local watering hole, a place called Erla’s which serves the worst Mexican food in the world. “Cheese nachos” consists of about about 20 tortilla chips with shredded unmelted cheese on top, and a few pieces of tomato. Then again, it only cost 70 cents. The rest of the food is better.

Shopping tomorrow – we need lots of supplies. We don’t even have trash cans!