Of apartment success, arrival of dry goods, and such

We finally are in the apartment that will be our home for the next two years. The apartment that was our first choice did indeed turn out to be too large. We actually went and re-measured the apartment ourselves, and I was still a little stumped that it was so big, but the teape measure don't lie.

So now we're in another unit in the building that had been Plan B. We're about four floors lower than the one we wanted, so the view is a little less spectacular, but still very nice. Pictures soon, I assure you.

Our air shipment arrived, as did the ground shipment from DC. The stuff from California is still in "tramite," which is a Spanish word that translates roughly as "administrative processing time," but also expresses the flavor of government workers who may or may not process anything on a given day if they don't really feel like it. Guatemalan government workers, of course, because America's public servants are diligent and ruthlessly efficient.

Anyway, we have an apartment with a huge living room, dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms, an office, and maid's quarters. Maid not included, technically, although we have already had one woman knock on our door and ask if we need a maid. Since our furniture from SF has not arrived yet, our living room has a small loveseat and a tv loaned to us from the embassy, each on opposite sides of the otherwise empty room, about 35 feet from one another. It's a little hard to see, but moving either item to the middle of the room makes the whole thing look even more ridiculous. But it's home nonetheless, and it's great to finally start settling in somewhere that we know we can stay for more than a few weeks. And we definitely won't miss the DHL plane that flies directly over the temporary apartments we were in at 4:30 every morning.