Oh Dear! I need a place to live! (blog post #200)

I don’t know why I’m surprised when God's amazing anymore.  I'm moving to Boston for work starting in September.  Getting housing taken care of, was the last detail I felt I had little control over and of course that made me nervous.  I sent emails out to at least 15 adds on craigslist (plus follow up emails to most), with no replies.  I only had one lead that I had gotten from posting my bio on the Park Ave Church housing forum.  I had days to spend in Boston and expected to look at 5-10 places during my stay, but only had one lead.  I set that up for the first evening hoping it was a good one, because I was out of ideas of how to get more.  Even asking for help from the locals (friends, cousins, and YWAM) didn’t yield anything promising.  

So I went out the area where the apartment was about an hour early.  I explored the area and it seemed delightful, with the shopping, and the park, and the semi-quiet neighborhood with many young international families.  As I’m waiting, I mention to a friend in Boston where I was looking.  "the house is on Wilson St. by the park, and near the Stop and Shop," I said.  Turns out she used to go by the street regularly, and that street sign was her reminder to pray for me.  That begins to ease my worries as I remember that God is looking out for me, just as he was when he got me the job a few weeks earlier.  I go in and the house is clean and spacious.  My room is at the front with large bay windows.  It turns out I’m allowed to put hooks in the wall to hang my bike from :)  it also has a basement for storing extra bikes.  Also turns out one of my roommates is familiar with YWAM and some of the people there that I've know since I was young.  To make it perfect, it's on the market for well under it's market value.  My potential roommates say they’ll get back to me in 48 hours.  They’ve already interviewed one person, and then have one more the next day.  Ends up, they call me back an hour later to say I have the spot.   God is good.  I can rest secure in him.  I am more than thrilled with my first apartment in Boston.  Now that that's settled, I have the rest of the week to enjoy Boston.

Living Quarters

So here is where I live.  It’s quite comfortable I find.  Not everything is in good taste, but it is almost all good quality.  There is a huge grandfather clock too, although we don’t run it because the bells would chime through the whole night.  There is a beautiful original painting on top of the wardrobe (pictured).  The center of the wardrobe has three shelves fronted by glass - the optimal location to showpiece my shoes.  On top is also a radio that would have been terrific back in the day.  It has preset channels, can adjust the highs and lows, gets FM and AM plus 2 other frequency ranges, that I don’t know the names of.  There are also lace curtains, which bothered me at first because they offer zero privacy.  I found that peculiar because Germans are super into their privacy (in order for google to bring ‘street view’ to Germany they had to provide individuals with the option to blur out their houses!).  Well, the landlord was showing me some things and pointed out the steel shutters that can be lowered like blinds on the outside so that even in broad daylight I cannot see my hand in front of my face (with the lights off of course).  The only things really missing?  internet and dryer.  I’ll manage just fine without those I think though

Other bigger picture details, I live in a house on the edge of town.  The house used to belong to a grandmother with two daughters and a son.  Daughter 1 grew up and moved north to Bremen for work I believe.  She had a daughter named Muriel.  Daughter 2 bought half of the duplex next door to her mother.  Grandmother’s son, Reinhard, moved into the other half of the duplex with his wife and son.  Daughter 1 came into possession of her mother’s house, presumably upon her death, but still lives far away.  She rents out half of the rooms to her brother Reinhard, and half to her daughter Muriel, who just moved in 2 days before I did.  Reinhard wanted the house for his office because of the 30 yard commute to work.  He doesn’t need all the space though so he is subletting one of the rooms to me, plus bathroom and kitchen access thankfully.  Before Muriel came, Reinhard had been renting the whole house would would sublet to 4 interns/students at a time.

Oh and I almost forgot, they like spiders in the corners because they keep down the fly and mosquito populations? yes, that’s what he said.  I always thought screens were a better solution for that but... they don’t believe in screens here.  They do believe in fresh air though so the windows are all open year around.  I don’t have any spiders in my room so I’m not too concerned.

 Black and gold - duvet and sheets (I can store things in the box spring).

 Painting, wardrobe, shoes, radio.

The view kneeling on my bed.

Wrapping Up (Part I)

Well here we can see all my bags. The 3 stacked are what I brought initialy for the 5 month stay. The black book bag is what I‘m taking to travel Europe for 2 weeks.

Note Bene: Everything in the black back will fit somewhere within the other 3 when I fly across the ocean.

Anyways, point being that I‘m getting better at packing light. The thing that made the biggest difference in that direction is that I'm only bringing the shoes on my feet and not any others. I may live to regret that once the rain starts falling...

This other picture here is with 3 of my flatmates. From left to right that is Valerie, Sebastian, and Franziska. The first 2 are German and the latter is Swiss. I have a little memory book some friends gave me for Christmas. I told everyone that I would forget about them upon going home if they didn‘t write in the book. My flatmates panicked and made a whole collage to make sure I didn‘t forget them. They cut out pictures from the newspaper to represent each of them. You can see the man in the middle with the burret is supposed to represent Charlène. She was absent (flying to Sweden) so she didn‘t get to pick. She‘s french so the picture is a good fit though =)

I move out of my apartment in 1 hour!

I‘m not sure if I‘ll blog while I‘m traveling but I‘ll be sure to fill you all in eventually.