House Hunting

We found a house to rent! We have been very impressed with the options we’ve seen for rental houses, and after less than a week in Whanganui, we have decided to rent a lovely three-bedroom house in Whanganui East. Here is a map of the city, with some of the important things pointed out.

You’ll notice that our house is a bit further away from J’s work and Uptown Café, which are downtown. But all of Whanganui is fairly small, and it turns out that our house is a paltry 5km (3.1mi) away from J’s office. Locals have assured us that the “terrible rush hour traffic” might hold him up for a maximum of three minutes on the bridge, and I don’t think we can complain about the 10 minute drive to work.

As for me, many of the preschools I’ve been learning about are in the area northeast of our motel, which is quite convenient from our house. The bike trail down by the river is nicely situated for me to get there, and I think the couple miles each day will be great for my health.

As for the house itself, I am going to post pictures of it after we move in, which will be on October 5^th. The owner, Adele, assured us that she would clean it thoroughly before we moved in, which was funny, since it is already the cleanest house we’ve look at here. We like her high standards, and she seems kind and pleasant all around. The house has big windows, high ceilings, and a beautiful yard. And, unlike other places we’ve seen, we can have pets there! We think it will be just perfect.

We had looked at a house just a few blocks away from our motel, which was also very nice and had a lovely owner who made it very clear that he would love to have us as tenants. At the time, we were confident that it would suit our needs very well, and gave him every assurance that we were intent on renting it, but that we wanted to look at just a few more places first. We had no idea that the next place we looked at would be so perfect! I have to say that calling him back and telling him that we would not be renting his house was very difficult for me. He was disappointed, but respectful and polite, which almost made it worse. I have a very hard time feeling as though I’ve let people down, but I guess I just have to deal with it.