Change of scenery

Its been a rough few days. The past few nights the three of us have had a nagging feeling that where we were staying may not be the safest place for us. Though the neighborhood may generally be safe for locals, we are the only foreigners in the area, and due to the occasional break-ins that do sometimes happen in suburban areas, we thought we would easily be a target. Additionally, we thought we would have an armed guard, but instead it is just a boy who is probably 15 or so who seems more like the landlady’s servant than a guard. He’s also about half my size. The lock on my bedroom door was also broken, and the landlady said she would fix it but had not made any effort to. Kat and I have been so anxious that we have been sleeping in the same room, but I was still been only pulling max 4 hours each night.

In addition to safety, we didn’t trust our landlady at all, and she’s been up to some shady stuff the past few days. She has been pushing us for her money since we’ve been here, even though its only been 3 days and she had already received payment for 2 out of the 3 months. She wants it so badly that yesterday when we came home and were trying to unlock the door that leads to our bedrooms, we discovered it was bolted shut from the inside. We’re pretty sure the landlady came in the back door while we were gone (she has a key) and bolted it shut so we couldn’t get in. That was sort of the last straw for us, so we found a hostel yesterday that is much safer and we feel much more comfortable, even though we are all crammed in one room as opposed to our separate rooms from before. We’re splitting a room to save costs because unfortunately, there is no way to get the 2 months of rent we already paid for the last house back. But we haven’t been more happy or relaxed since being here, and the feeling of security is definitely worth losing those few hundred dollars. Best of all, I was able to sleep for a full 10 hours last night =)

Now that the housing has been settled, I’m really excited about starting my project, which is going to be really interesting. That will have to wait until the next post though, I’ll try and have that up soon. Meanwhile, I’ll upload some photos of our old home, our new home, and the office today.