Moving is a pain!

Before I get on to the topic of this blog post - namely moving into my apartment - there is something I wanted to add on the subject of my last post. The gym is open 24 hours a day during the week. When I heard that I thought that was one of the craziest thing's I'd heard - I mean, who on earth is going to go to gym at some odd hour of the morning?? Well this morning I was chatting to the guy who lives above me - Ted. It turns out that he went to gym last night at about 12pm! This was also after he'd had a couple beers. He didn't seem to think that there was much strange about this! So there do appear to be people who are crazy enough to go to gym at any hour - and I apparently am living in the same apartment block as one of them!

Moving, apartments... aah, what a wonderful topic. I just felt like adding that seeing as I've been putting this off for so long! Well to cut a really long (and rather boring) story short I have found a new apartment and am no longer living at Marge's house. The location of my new apartment is great - it's sooo convenient! It's literally across the road from the campus on a street nicknamed 'College Row' because all the apartments on it are inhabited by students. If you're interested in having a look at a map of the campus btw the link is below:

https://sunspot.sdsu.edu/map/display.cgi

We're on the upper left side of the map right next to the International Student Centre (which is red). We're also just down the road from the university gym and if I want to catch the trolley or a bus all I need to do is to walk through the campus. So location gets 100%!

Above is a picture of the apartment block - not much to look at but it gets better though! We're on the 3rd floor (3rd window up on the right). I'm not too sure what happened to the ground floor because the numbering starts at 1 - wierd! The apartment is in a mini complex called College View Apartments (highly imaginative!) There are 32 apartments in it in total and our block gets called the tower because it's the tallest of all the blocks (again, a huge stretch of imagination there).

Inside it's really nice, although we had to fight to get it that way. It's a 2 bed 2 bathroom place. I have the smaller bedroom, not that that counts for much - it's still bigger than my room at home I think! Below are some pics of the place:

This is Sarah and her Dad Rick when we were moving in - note the piles of stuff in the background!

My room viewed from the doorway. It's so wierd - we don't have lights on the ceiling - something to do with having heating up there?? So we have lights in the kitchen and dining area and the bathrooms, that's it! Anyway, that's why you can see numerous lights in the room. I found the desk on a fantastic website called craigslist. It's very heavy though! Our building has a lift but it's really small so the desk didn't fit in so the two guys from the ground floor flat carried it up the stairs for me! At least that worked - Sarah had to haul her bed and couches over the balcony!

The other side of my room - this pic was taken from the bed. Note the fan - it's been so ridiculously hot in my room for the last few days and I couldn't work out why. Initially I thought it had something to do with leaving the lights on but then I made a concerted effort to switch them off. So then I thought it must have something to do with the air circulation in the room and left both the blinds and the door open. But it still didn't help! The rest of the apartment was noticeably cooler than my room. Eventually, last night just as I was getting into bed I had a brainwave - remember I mentioned the heating in the ceiling and why we can't have lights there... well it turned out that mine was on full blast! Why? I have no idea. but at least the problem's solved now. I just had to suffer for almost a week before I worked it out though - silly Kate!

This is our kitchen and dining area... note the tiles, they're important later! The window looks out onto the roof of the apartment block next door. We're lucky we have it though - we get a nice breeze blowing through! The apartments below us all have a wall there instead and it makes it really dark and stuffy.

This is our lounge/living area. The photo's taken from the dining area. It's sooo big! You can see the sliding door and balcony that those couches had to be hauled over! Luckily Sarah had all the extra furniture we needed so all I had to get was stuff for my room.

This is our balcony and view! We look across to the university. The parking lot is for the International student centre so we're literally right across the street. In the distance you can see a white tower - that's the University's bell tower. It rings at odd times, I still haven't worked out when! As Warren pointed out, the logical thing to do would be to ask someone. It sounds really pretty though!

So now you've got a basic idea of the apartment. it's pretty nice huh? I think so - especially when I've seen what some of the other's in this building look like. although they do have guys living in them which says a lot! But it didn't always look like that... far from it in fact. We weren't shown our apartment initially as there were still people living in it. Instead we were shown an empty one on the ground floor and told 'your one will look just like it' and we're painting it and putting new carpets in. Well our one did look 'just like it' in terms of layout only! It was gross and dirty and smelled. The carpets - let's not even go there! They were so bad that even the carpet cleaners refused to clean them as they said there's no point. Then the landlady turned around and said I'm not putting new carpeting in. I don't have the money now (because she'd just spent $11000 doing up her daughter's apartment as we later discovered). That was not cool! We got what we wanted eventually but only after a lot of 'discussion'. I think it also helped when she came up to see the place and saw just how bad it was. So remember the bit about the tiles - well below is a pic of the dining area being tiled (it used to be carpeted) and the evil landlady. Although she was reasonable in the end.

The tiles were so odd - not ceramic ones like I'm used to but these funny plastic ones that just got glued down. But still better than carpet. As for the rest of the place - let's just say if a career in economics doesn't work out I could become a professional cleaner. I spent 3 hours cleaning my bathroom. It was totally disgusting. I wouldn't call myself a neat and clean freak (anyone who's seen the general state of my room at home can testify to that) but I'm used to stuff being relatively clean and at least hygienic! After my 3 hours in the bathroom my fingers went all funny after all the disinfectant. Oh, and it's not exactly a big bathroom!

The end result is that now Sarah and I have a really nice place to live.