New House

Well, my computer still isn't working. Apparently I just need to boot it from a Live CD and run a file system check. Too bad the Live CD isn't booting (I had this problem when I first installed the operating system). So, instead, I'm hanging out at the office for this update.

So we just moved to a new house. And when I say house, I actually mean house this time. My room is no longer a storage space for company equipment (so there might be a few boxes in my room, but nothing like before) and it's big enough that I can move around (and I can actually keep all my things in there instead of using Jodie's room for storage). Also, as an improvement over our previous place, the kitchen, sitting room and workshop are now three separate rooms as opposed to the previous multi-purpose room. And each of those rooms is bigger than the one that we were using before for all three (the workshop is supposed to be a garage, but that didn't seem like the best use of space). The rooms also come with cabinets, drawers and mirrors (which means I no longer have an excuse for my wrinkled clothes and ragged appearance--also means that it is much easier to put food and dishes away in the kitchen) and the house has 3 bathrooms (there are only four of us living there, but we're hoping for visitors, HINT HINT).

We moved to a new location called Banana (still in Arusha, though). We're a little further from town and the office (which is probably healthy) and we have a spectacular view of Mt. Meru. Jodie is thrilled to be free of the dust that we dealt with at our old place. I'm less excited about the mosquito insurgency. You see, mosquitoes commonly live around banana trees and I'll just let you guess how the location got its name. Also, as we're further from town, we're much more prone to water shortages. We have two huge water tanks to keep full so that we won't be caught without water. Unfortunately, we haven't managed to fill them yet, so we have to transport our water from town everyday. And as a major tragedy, we don't have internet at the house currently. It's been rough on all of us, since we are pretty dependent on it, but hopefully we'll learn some healthier habits in the meantime.

The moving process was something of a nightmare (though much less hellish than moving out of my Kenyan house or the first place we lived in Tanzania). We wanted to finish in one day, but that made everything completely hectic. I didn't have space to pack up my room, so I was trying to send my stuff in waves (bear in mind I don't have a lot of stuff, I was just in an incredibly confined space). But after the first wave, I discovered that they had thrown all my stuff into whatever they could find and sent it over to the house. This led to a lot of searching and discovering them in the most bizarre locations. Unfortunately, our internet modem has not turned up, and no one has any idea where it might have gotten to. As I mentioned above, this may lead us to reduce our internet dependence.

I've let Jodie take the lead on organizing the common spaces, but I took some ownership over the kitchen (it's amazing how much difference a little space makes) and I'll probably be in charge of creating a garden. I'm glad there's finally space to do that. The soil is pretty lousy, so I might start with potatoes, since I can slowly add healthy soil to that. But I probably need to wait until we have a plan for water.

I can't believe I forgot to mention the craziest part. The key ring is huge! We have two keys for our outer gate (my first time living behind a locked gate since I've been here), a key for the garage padlock, one for the front door, a room key, backdoor key and I think I'm forgetting one. Hopefully we'll make copies soon so that we don't have to figure out key choreography for too long.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll have lots more adventures to share in this place, so stay tuned and if you know any chants or runes that might be able to help my computer, that would be much appreciated.