Spencers Thoughts on Apartments

I know Tawny wrote a really long post about our apartment search, but I wanted to write something too :)

I was really nervous about finding an apartment in China.  I had seriously worried about it for at least two months.  Tawny and I were as prepared as we could have been.  We did a lot of research online to see what type of apartments were available, we even mapped out an area we wanted to live in.

When we got to China, I was terrified to go out with a realtor alone.  I knew my Chinese was not even close to the level it needed to be for me to be able to communicate with a realtor.  The first day we got to Nanjing things just didn't align the way we wanted them to so we ended up going out with two separate realtors who didn't speak English and saw three places.  It was really hard, but we survived and we were able to communicate somewhat.

After two or three days of seeing places we just didn't like we were getting a bit bummed out.  We knew where we wanted to live, and we knew what we wanted our surroundings to be, but we just were not finding it.  Monday night I decided I needed to go down and look at the area where a few members live, so I took the subway and met up with one of the members (Chris).  He showed me around a little.  I really liked the area.  On the subway ride home I had a pretty awesome realization.  I had been completely wrong about where I thought we wanted to live.  Our surrounding were important, and I thought the area we wanted to live in would be the best location for the surroundings, but I was wrong.  It hit me like a brick, we had been looking at all the wrong places.  I was like a mind block was suddenly removed and I had this perfect understanding of where we needed to live.

I went back to the hotel really excited to tell Tawny all about it.  The next couple days we looked at apartments in the area, and completely stopped looking in the previous area where we were looking.  We decided we were going to be a little picky still and were pretty set on living inside the exact complex as the members, not a neighboring one.

Tawny wrote about all the details, so I will not repeat them.

Looking back on this experience it is painfully obvious how wrong I was.  I thought I knew exactly what we were looking for, and thought I knew exactly were to find it, but in the end, luckily Heavenly Father stepped in and gently pointed us in the correct direction.  It was a spiritual and humbling experience.  Now to think about us living in a different apartment seems crazy!  This is the place we need to be.  We love our home, our neighbors, the surrounding areas, and the atmosphere.  It feels good to be home!