Still Hunting

Well, we're still looking for a house. We've been done with CLI for 10 days and we're still stuck in this apartment! :-) I truly never thought it would be this difficult to find something. In the last week and a half we've spent hours upon hours in the car just driving around, through mubaans (the word for neighborhood) looking for "for rent" signs. We've talked to Realtors, talked to friends, even talked to random Thai people asking if someone knows of houses for rent. Our biggest problem isn't availability. There ARE houses out there. The problem is finding a house that is in right area, the right size, and the right prices. It seems like there are plenty bigger, more expensive houses, and also smaller cheap houses...but mid-sized, mid-priced houses are tough to come by. I know our biggest issue is that we're really limiting ourselves to certain areas...either close to Damien's work, or close to the kids school. We only have one car so we need to be close to one or the other. We've driven down every single street in both areas. The poor kids were so sick of the car. Since we would be in the car for hours at a time we actually started hooking up the portable DVD player and letting the kids watch movies. It was like being on a long trip!

I mentioned a house in my last house-hunting blog. A family that is retiring and moving back to the US in April. The house was great. A good price (although at the top of our price range) and a perfect layout. The only problem is that there was no yard...zip, zilch, nada. Not one blade of grass...and nowhere even close for the kids to play outside. Houses here are totally fenced in...all of the way around. This house had a driveway in the front and that's it. Now, I use the word "yard" liberally because what we would call a yard here, people back home would totally laugh at. A patch of grass the size of a master bedroom is highly prized here. So, although we're not ruling it out completely, we're leaning against it. And we also had to give up the sublet down by where Orin is supposed to go to school in January because they really needed an answer (they had another family interested) and we just couldn't commit because we're still figuring things out.

One thing that may be changing is the school plans. As I mentioned, we were thinking about having Orin go to a different school than originally planned. They don't have room in their Kindergarten for him to begin in January, so he was going to go to Grace next semester and then we'd change him to CMIS next year for first grade. But when we went to visit CMIS last week, they actually told us he might be able to get in this January! This would be wonderful. He wouldn't have to change schools which would be great. Both schools also charge a hefty entrance fee so we'd have to pay it to Grace and then again to CMIS next year. The admission's committee is meeting this week and we're praying they will let him in. Ironically (at least we think so) the reason they would let him is is because he's white. :-) CMIS is a very diverse school. It's one thing we love about it. There are Thai students but also students from all over the world. Apparently, the Kindergarten is very heavily Thai and other Asian ethnicities and they would really like more Western students because they want to keep it proportionately diverse. They meet at the end of the week and we're really praying he gets in. Even better, they have a bilingual preschool that is only for the siblings of students at the school. So Micaiah could go there as well. It's more expensive then we had hoped (although about the same as the other preschools in the area) which is why we're really trying to stay under budget for our house.

Through all of our driving we found about 10 houses to call. The secretary at the office (who is Thai) generously called all of them for us. Only 2 were in our price range so we're going to see them this week. We also looked at a house with a Realtor. It was a little too expensive for us and was the STRANGEST layout I've ever seen. But it was in the perfect area and Damien could walk to work. But the Realtor was supposed to talk to the owner to see if they would come down on the price and we haven't heard back so we're not too hopeful. We also have another option. Damien's boss is going on furlough soon. He has a house that we might be able to rent. It's somewhat small, with only two bedrooms upstairs, but there is a possibly of closing off an area to make another room. This house is really cheap and also in a GREAT area (we could walk to CMIS). We'd have to do a lot to it because it's in pretty bad shape and really has no kitchen. But labor is really cheap here so it would be ok. But it's all still very up in the air. We're thankful to have a few options out there and are praying that something works out - soon.

Here is a picture of the kids as we drove around town. :-)