Home Sweet Home

We moved into our new home!! We (Julia and I) had been wanting to move closer to school for a while, and we found the place! The landlady seems great! Hopefully everything will continue to go swimmingly! The other day our landlady came over and sat and chatted with us while we were eating breakfast!

Here's our house! It looks big and it kinda is. It's $400 a month divided by 2, so $200 a month for me. In August we will have another teacher living with us so then it will be even cheaper. It's a great house!

The house is really open. This is looking at the front door. And then you can also see the railing of the balcony upstairs. We can really talk to each other from any room in the house.

The area to the left is a little living room. 

We have a nice big balcony!

This is from the front door looking to the kitchen. The stairs are to the right. And the door you can see on the right side of the picture is the door to the third bedroom. The little living room is right to the right, and then this big open area. We have some beautiful hard wood Lao furniture. It's pretty but not the most comfortable. So we still need to buy a couch and some comfy chairs.

We rented this truck for $12 to move all of our stuff from our old house to our new house. It was cheap and easy! I don't know how we've accumulated so much junk in only 6 months!

Our little neighbor, Waleesa, came over right away to welcome us and help unpack things! She's been over for probably 2 hours every day so far! Her mom has made dinner for us twice I think. The neighbors are so nice and welcoming! And we were asked to drink some beer with our other neighbors. We were going somewhere, so had to decline, but hopefully next time we can join them for a Pepsi! We asked to have relationships with our new neighbors, and I feel this request is already being granted!

Some students and friends came over to help us clean and unpack our stuff! They're cleaning our kitchen cupboards. 

Waleesa an Julia wearing our garbage cans as hats.

Our front porch view. We have a nice big yard!

We made cookies to take to our neighbors. We had friends and students come help us bake. Nuyie is scooping them on the pan. She didn't think the dough tasted very delicious.

We don't have a microwave yet, so we had to soften the butter over our gas stove. I splattered some on my skirt, so I wanted to wash it to get it out. I put my skirt in a big kitchen mixing bowl and poured on some boiling water to get out the grease (this may have been the wrong thing to do... I don't know). Since the water was boiling, I used a big mixing spoon so I wouldn't burn my hands. Sonexay came running over and told me how disgusting it was that I was using the kitchen bowl and spoon to wash my clothes. I said it didn't matter, but she was appalled! 

But afterwards, she used the kitchen rag to wipe the floor, and then rinsed it out to wipe the counters... which I've definitely done before too... but to my American mind, I think that is grosser than putting my skirt in a kitchen bowl. Just some fun cultural cleanliness differences. 

They also love to sweep the floor! I think they've swept 3 times every day! 

ViengPhone is helping to make the cookies.

Playing Uno!

We also have some little neighbor boys who like to come into our gate and play on our swing. They've also enjoyed eating our cookies! It's so fun to have kids feel free to come into our house!

So my first four days in our new house have been great! We're almost finished buying everything that we will need! :) We've spent lots of money, but I think it will be worth it!

I'll put up some more pictures of our house soon. It's three bedroom and two bathroom.