Home Sweet Home 2

As you can tell, I haven't had a chance to update this as much as I want to because we still don't have internet at home. Hopefully it should only be a few more days without it.
We are still so happy to be living in this new place with our friends all around us. So far we have had coffee and treats together outside several evenings, and there is a party planned for tonight. It's super convenient to just walk downstairs to have a good time (or to borrow something).
The first night here, all 8 of us neighbors had a little party to celebrate the new move. One of our friends here who is a chef made a bunch of really tasty pizzas for us, and we all toasted to our little villa!

Home Sweet Home

It's been way too long without making a post on here, and after moving and taking a vacation, I am finally getting around to it. Better late than never, right?

We just got home from our beach vacation early this morning, and we are sooo happy to be returning to our new casa! There was some stress and drama associated with the move, but I am happy to leave that in the past. After all of the trouble of arranging the move (can't just call U-Haul down here, had to enact Plan B at the last minute, extra money for bribes, etc.), it was completely worth the hassle in retrospect.

This new place is way bigger, way nicer, way safer, way calmer, and closer to the teatro, gym, and park. We both are still adjusting to the fact that we are not just visiting a friend here, since it used to be our friends' place. As it turns out, there was an open place we were gonna take underneath our friends' old place. Right before we signed the lease, they asked if we would trade places with them, so they ended up moving downstairs, and we moved into an already painted and ready-to-live-in place. Besides having downstairs neighbors that are our friends, we are friends with the other 2 couples that live in the other complex here. Three out of four of the places have musicians from the orchestra, and the other one is has a very cool couple. Everyone gets along very well, and we can't help but think that it's like Melrose Place here, minus the drama!

The guys we ended up hiring to help us move were amazing! Four guys showed up to our old place with a truck and some boxes and tools at a little after 2 pm. They had disassembled our bed and moved all of our furniture and appliances (you have to take your fridge and stove with you) from the old place to the new place by 4 pm. We tried to help them carry some things, and they didn't even want our help. They were incredibly efficient and fast and even joked around the whole time- and it wasn't even expensive.

We were shocked when one guy carried our fridge on his back-

down some steps and across the street!

Inside the new place- that is the living room, 

and you can see the 2 bedroom doors

Success!!!! 

You can see the kitchen 

and laundry room behind us.

I will post more pics later because the internet is being frustratingly slow right now... 

And we're on our way to have some coffee with our new neighbors outside :) 

Serendipity

YAY! We're MOVING!

We just so happened to be checking out a friend's washing machine the other day since ours is a complete dud. After closing the deal to buy their machine, they jokingly asked if we wanted to move into the place under them. We've spent plenty of time in this particular "village" at another friend's place, and I have always imagined this as the place I would want to live in Manaus. Unfortunately for us, when we moved here several months ago, there was nothing available. But now, in less than a week, we will be trading our nice but noisy casa for a nicer, safer, calmer, and bigger casa!!! With plenty of built-in friends in the same complex!

We still need to get all the details ironed-out with the actual moving, disassembling of things, reassembling of things, and all that stuff, but we are both so happy!! Once everything is all settled, I will put up some pics for you all to see.
Oh, and now we don't have to worry about moving that washing machine!