The new house

So finally moved into my new house. It's so cute I have to keep pinching myself. I'm trying to ignore the annoyance I feel at how poor the support is that PSI is providing and focus on how great the place is. It's in a quiet neighborhood back pretty far from the road- although there's a surprising amount of noise (seems to be a dog gang). It's a three bedroom, 3.5 bath cottage. It also has a two bedroom guesthouse in the back yard and a two car garage. And the backyard contains a bar for outdoor entertaining (can be seen a bit in the second picture - that wood thing). There's also a rusty multi-colored children's play set with a slide and swings that I'm a little worried about.

So far there's not much to say about it. I don't have any furniture so I'm borrowing a bed and a table/chairs from PSI who seemed to have them floating around. I got eaten alive by mosquitos the first night so got a net from work as well. And I'm borrowing plates, a blanket and one pot from a colleague. I had the living room, dining room and master bedroom painted while I was in Tanzania last week and I spent my first night putting up the manger scene and fake tree. Reminded me of doing exactly that 3 years ago when I moved into the empty place in India and had no furniture except the table, piano and christmas tree!

Since the house came with a gardener and the place looks great, I kept him on staff and am trying out a housekeeper that the sister of my colleague's housekeeper. The gardener's great and he washes my car every morning. Still not sure about the housekeeper - hard to measure up to Tenzing. The cat seems to be settling in slowly. She did well the first day, spent most of the day running around like crazy and loudly meowing to see where I was. And then at 4pm she conked out and slept in a drawer the rest of the day. Then early in the morning of the first night I slept there I awoke to a low growling sound and realized another cat had come in a window and was now in my bedroom. That sorely shook Kali and she hid for a few hours after.

Can't wait for the dryer to arrive (my cloths feel horribly stiff) and for my shipment to arrive, which will likely happen the day before I leave for Christmas R&R. It would be nice if the stove worked but that might just be too much to ask for.