We moved into our apartment Monday afternoon 🙂  I’m ridiculously precise when it comes to time to the point of arriving 10 minutes early and pacing around, just to make sure that I’m not late.  Our housing agent was 10 minutes late, which wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that we were already meeting way later than what we had expected, and we were illegally parked in a construction zone on a public holiday.  Oops.  Thankfully, nothing worse than a few agitated honks were directed our way!

Our housing agent was in a hurry.  He handed me the keys and Chris went to park the car in the garage.  I went upstairs with the agent – he flipped on the lights, told me he’d email me the list of move-in check-offs, and to let him know if we had any complaints.  He left before Chris got upstairs, which meant that we had no idea where the “rubbish room” for the apartment building was or where our mailbox was located.  I went on a treasure hunt today and found them with the help of a nice cleaning lady 🙂

We’ve done a lot of shopping.  We’re driving a mid-size rental car and we’ve had it packed to overflowing twice already.  The first time was when we went shopping on Sunday – vacuum, microwave, lots of dishes and household goods – and the second time was on Monday after we moved.  We bought a dehumidifier {a necessity in New Zealand}, heater, and lots of cleaning supplies.  Oh, and food!  We’ve been living out of a tiny hotel-room kitchen for the last 3 weeks, and I wanted to be able to finally use an oven.  We bought a few basic kitchen supplies to tide us over until the rest of our earthly goods arrive from the States.

Today was spent cleaning, cleaning, and doing some more cleaning.  I scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom, washed all of the windows in the apartment, cleaned both bathrooms, washed down the doors, washed the table and chairs, washed some of the outlets and switchplate covers… and more.  I still have a ways to go.  Let’s just say that my definition of clean and our housing agent’s definition of clean don’t exactly match.  Still, it’s nice to have something to occupy my time, and I do so love the smell of a clean house!

We also got some of our furniture today.  We purchased a sofabed, love seat, and sofa with built-in chaise about a week ago.  The poor men who delivered them had to walk the sofabed and sofa up 6 flights of stairs.  I was so embarrassed, even though I’m sure that they’ve had worse deliveries than that.  They were drenched in sweat by the time they reached our floor.  One of the guys was wheezing.  I was walking ahead of them, convinced that at any moment one of them was going to pass out or lose their grip and be crushed by our leather sofa.  Bless them!

We don’t have internet or a home phone in our apartment yet.  I’ll be making the incredibly short trek to the library each day until it’s up and running.  This means that I probably won’t be in communication very much, so I’m sorry if I ignore any of your emails or don’t have a chance to comment on what’s going on in your lives!  Fingers crossed that we’ll have home internet access soon, and I’ll be sure to post photos once we’re a bit more settled 🙂