apartment update

The past month has been full of picking out stuff for the apartment, checking on the work being done on the apartment, planning paint colors for the apartment, figuring out rooms in the apartment. Doing this all from scratch has been more of a task than I ever imagined it could have been, but significant strides have been made.

By far the most frustrating part of all of it is the contractors. There are no schedules, no order to things, no care for anything. Most of the time they call and say "I'm at the apartment to close in your laundry porch. Come let me in." "I'm an hour away." "Oh, well come let me in." "No. I am in the middle of something, I can't just drop it to drive an hour to come let you in. You should have called me 2 days ago to let me know you were going to be here." And so on and so forth. Here is one particularly frustrating conversation I had with the light fixture people last week:

"Our people will come on Saturday to install the new light fixtures. They will need a ladder to stand on."

(At the time, our wall guy had an A frame horse that stayed in the apartment, so I didn't think that would be a problem. However, he finished his work 2 days before the light guys came, and I didn't have a ladder.)

"I'm afraid I don't have a ladder in the apartment. He'll have to bring on when he comes out."
(Installation guy calling me):
"This is the installation guy. You'll have to get me a ladder to install the lights or I can't install them."
"You don't have your own ladder?"
"No, we don't keep ladders."
"You install light fixtures and you don't have a ladder?"
"No. We don't keep ladders."
"Do light fixtures go in the ceiling or in the ground?"
"In the ceiling."
"So everyday you put light fixtures up in the ceiling and you don't have a ladder."
"Actually that is a very good point. The answer is yes, we don't have ladders."
"So you want me to go buy a ladder for you?"
"No, you can ask the HOA to borrow theirs."

It is little frustrating things like these that seem to be non-stop. Either way, progress is being made. Have a look at the pictures after the walls were painted:

The guest room in the front of the house

The back guest room

The entry way/dining room. This deep red wall is actually now ruined by the porch enclosure people placing their glass on in and scratching it to pieces after I told them 3 times, "please be careful with the walls, they were just painted." This also happens to be the darkest color paint in the house, the most expensive paint (hence why we only did one wall) and the most difficult to touch up. Needless to say, I have a big problem with the porch enclosure guys right now.

Master bedroom

Office. Carolina blue, per standard.

So that is where the apartment is at this point. After today, we will have toilets! We'll post another update in a couple of weeks.

the last month!

it is a pretty fair guess at how busy we've been recently by how much blogging has been happening here. and since there has been nothing for over a month, our lives are clearly a little chaotic. but this morning at 3:58am my teacher texted me to tell me she is sick (again) (aside: sickness has been devastating here recently- up until last week i had been sick 3 weeks in a row, jarred has been sick for the past week and a half, and both of my teachers have been sick the past 2 weeks- awful!- oh, and a bunch of us here aren't sleeping well at all, so think of us) and couldn't have class. so here i am now sitting at our kitchen table with a cup of coffee taking a breath and typing some of our life happenings over the past few weeks. most of our daily life isn't below, but most of the fun things are, so enjoy :)

3 out of the past 4 saturdays have been throwing or attending parties, which in my mind is always a good thing. sorry these are in backwards order. i don't have many pics recently so these i snagged from my friend danielle who is the best blogger i know. and our lives are so similar here i could just as well just send you over to her blog for an update on our lives. anyways, in reverse order:

party #3- baby shower #2- this time thrown by danielle herself for some local friends.

grace, me, and danielle. the 3 of us are the only girls that have lived out here in the middle of nowhere for a year and a half now. eating up the last couple months with grace before she moves home this summer.

party #2- danielle's baby shower!

maybe not the most creative cake, but my abilities are limited and it turned out cute anyways!

not so much a party, but the weather has been beautiful and that has been lots of time on our (and here, the shelleys') porch. april and may are my favorite months here by far and this year i have yet to be disappointed.

a couple weeks ago here we had a national holiday: tomb sweeping day. i'm serious. since we do not have a personal practice of climbing distant mountains to burn some fake paper money at the graves of our descendants, we went off with our neighbors for our own celebration of a different kind. we tried out the AMAZING breakfast buffet at the howard johnson that finally opened a 10 min WALK from us. it was delicious-- bacon, waffles, omlettes, sausage, cheeses, fruit, cereal with cold milk. we ate so much. and then went and played putt-putt in the city. it was like being in america for a day.

typically, jarred ruins pictures on purpose.but this time i don't even think he meant to.

back to party #2- baby shower #1

the neighborhood girls and hosts of the baby shower!
me, lyndsay, danielle, lindsey, and grace

and the party that kicked them all off! party #1- leeann and blake's engagement party! leeann is a sweet friend of ours who lived here our second year and now lives in a different city. she got engaged to blake in december. he lives in germany and came all the way here to see leeann for a week, so we got to meet him and celebrate them getting married this summer since we won't get to be there. they are awesome and it was so much fun to get to spend a little bit of time with them together. i hope they move back here soon :)

that's all for now. but check back soon bc i hope to update you on how our new apartment is coming and lots more.