House Hunting

As soon as we got to our hotel we had realtors ready to show us a few places. There was a student from the branch that was going to go with us since neither of the realtors spoke English like we hoped.  Everything was a little unorganized, so we decided to just go out alone without the guy from the branch. 

We were both more nervous about how josh was going to handle it then whether or not we could communicate. Josh was so good. We kept him awake and took him to see 2 places.  The first was really nice and really out of our price range the second was really bad and scary. With the second place we had to wait around forever for the landlord to get there, and since the housing was on the university campus we already knew we weren’t going to like it. It was kind of an annoying was to star the whole apartment searching adventure.

By the time we were done it was around 5 and I wanted to get Josh back and to bed, poor little guy was so tired.  Spencer went back out to look at another place while Josh and I went to sleep, knowing that when he got up I would have to. Spencer came back without seeing anything he liked, but the next day was church so we were both excited about that.

We walked to church from our hotel.  Everyone was so nice and welcoming.  A few of the members remembered Spencer, which was really cool.  None of the China Horizons teachers really knew we were going to be there so they were all surprised to see us.  We were so happy to be there it felt great. We talked to a few members but didn’t want to ask for help because we thought it would be more a burden and random people probably ask them all the time and we didn’t want to give the impression that we were using them etc…besides we knew the area we wanted to live in and we had like 4 realtors trying to find us places in that area. Finding a place was the most important thing at this point.

After church Spencer went out with one the China Horizons teachers (Brad) who speaks Chinese to look at one apartment.  The landlord was only able to show him the place on Sunday.  Spencer liked the fact that he got to ride a scooter to the place.  The apartment was brand new and really nice.  I think there are some pictures of it in another post.  The inside was seriously perfect in almost everyway.  The only complaint we had was that there was not really a couch.  There was only a little two-seat couch like thing.  Spencer told the landlord we would consider it if they would provide us a couch and a desk (since he would be working from home).  The landlords agreed.  Spencer came home and said he liked the place, but really was not a huge fan of the location.  Later that evening all three of us walked down to the apartment to scope out the surrounding area.  Spencer still didn’t like the location at all, but I didn’t think it was that bad.  We knew we were going to see a few more places in the morning.

Monday was a big day for us, on the one hand we were starting to get depressed and hadn’t seen any options that we liked, living in a hotel room was hard on Josh, so it was hard on me, which made it hard on Spencer who felt a huge burden from all the other stuff going on already. After being in the area we wanted to live in and not finding any room for Josh to move around in without running into the road or getting hit by a scooter or car I was getting a bit nervous because I know that neither of us like being inside during the summer time.  We widened our scope and went out to see another apartment a little further outside of our original area.  It was the craziest place we had ever seen.  I know Spencer put a few pictures of it in another post.

All of our realtors (I think we had at least 5 by now) were stumped.  None of them were able to find a place that fit our requirements.  Either the apartments were old and nasty, or nice with horrible locations.  Spencer was pretty dead set on living near a grocery store, little noodle shops, and just some fun plaza areas.  After we talked about it, we decided to make an offer on the apartment Spencer saw on Sunday.  Spencer and Brad went down and spoke with the realtor.  Spencer was ready to barter the price or get some other stuff included in the apartment.  The landlord seemed excited to rent.  Spencer came home in shock.  The landlord said that she did not want to buy a couch or really do anything extra, she just wanted to rent.  She said she just wanted to wait for someone who would rent it as is.  They didn’t want to rent to us.

We called up some members in our branch that have 3 kids.  They live a little outside the area we liked and Spencer went down that night to check it out while I put Josh to bed. He came home late but excited. He said, that’s where we need to live. It had everything we were looking for plus 2 play areas for Josh, water and fish ponds, markets, a grocery store, and the metro stop all within 5 min walk, plus other members.  There are currently 4 families in our branch living in the complex!  Amazing! 

So Tuesday morning Spencer called another member of the branch and had him contact another realtor and they started the search in this area. I was excited to go and check it out also, so we put josh in his stroller got on the Metro and saw a few places but still NOTHING! And not in the complex we knew we had to live in just in the surrounding area.  Josh needed to get out an play for a bit so we went to the playground for about half an hour.  Josh got out an played, and Spencer sat on a bench just thinking and trying to figure things out.  We talked for a little bit, and frankly we were pretty down and depressed.  Josh seemed to be done playing, so we headed back to the metro bummed out and discouraged that in all 19 complexes in the community we wanted there was only one available, and it was awful.

Than a miracle happened, her name is Bonnie. She is a member in our branch and we wanted to save a whole post for her so we’ll talk about her later but she saved us. We didn’t talk to her Sunday but it was like we were old friends I guess its hard to miss one another when you are the only white people on the same street. We told her about our day and she said, well let me take you to my realtor I used and we will get you a place, we were so excited. She was so thoughtful of us and what we were looking for. Not to mention Josh. Which made me so happy. She was concerned that he needed to eat or sleep or get out and stretch and It made me feel so relaxed and at ease.

So, that night with Bonnie we looked at just as many apartments as we had since we arrived. We went over to see one of the member’s apartments.  She was moving out in 3 weeks.  Her place was really nice. It was by far the best option we had seen so far.  The only problem was she was moving out in 3 weeks. We both were so glad we had options, but still nothing we loved, but at least things were happening for us.

The next day was Wednesday.  We felt like we wanted to make a decision because the hotel room was getting old. Spencer needed to get back to a work and Josh needed room to run. We got a phone call from one of our realtor.  By this point, we basically had decided to move into this member’s apartment in 3 weeks.  We were going to find a cheaper hotel closer to the complex and just deal with it for 3 weeks.  Anyways, so this realtor had one more place to show us and shame on us but for a split second we thought no, don’t want to see it, we are done looking.  We will just move into this apartment.  Then of course Spencer and I both thought “What? We don’t even like any of the places we looked at we are going to settle and we need to show more faith.”

So Spencer went and looked at it and came home an hour and a half later excited and showed me the video of the place. I hadn’t even watched more than a min while he was giving me details and I just knew it was perfect. Everything about it was what we wanted and it just looked like home and what we wanted for our china experience.

Spencer made an appointment before he left the apartment to come back in two hours.  So we got Josh all ready and headed back to the apartment.  It was exactly what we were looking for.  We made sure a few of the important details were clear with the landlord and told her we wanted it.  We made an appointment to sign the contract in a few hours.

Bonny took us to meet the members who lived the same complex as us, just 4 floors below.  They were great.  Spencer went with the husband to go to the bank to get money and I went down to the playground area with the rest of the family.

Later that evening the branch president’s wife, Sister Yu, met us at the realtors office.  She helped us hammer out all the details and made sure we were signing a clean contract.  We were so grateful she was available to come and help us on such short notice.

We paid, signed the contract, and moved in Thursday morning!