Moving on...over

In addition to the many things that happened in October, we moved into a new house. It's something we had been considering for a little while, and finally we got around to talking to our realtor about it. Well, the first people to see it loved it (which made us reconsider, of course). The following few weeks was a roller coaster. There were several complications to our moving, including the 2 year lease we signed when we moved in (very common here), the requirement that we could secure our new house at the same time we finalized the sublease, the landlady agreeing to the special considerations that must be given to the new tenants as Belgian embassy staff, the new tenants' willingness to not have much done to the house as a condition of their move, and the timing of moving around idil fitri and our trip to Bali. One day it looked like we'd move, and the next it wouldn't. Well, the day before we left for Bali it all came together, and we moved 3 days after we got back.

Why, you may ask, did we go through all this pain and agony? At the time we wondered that ourselves. But now that we've moved we feel we were right in doing so. One of the main reasons was that the motorcycle noise was annoying us, and it was on the kids' side of the house and we worried about it waking them up. The last thing J wanted to hear after spending 1 hour in Jakarta traffic to get home was the sound of the ever present motorcycles. A big reason for me to move was the constant mosquito problem in the house. It was an older house and not well sealed, and no matter what we did there were always lots of mosquitoes in the house. We had to have it sprayed once/month to try to get rid of them, and god knows what those chemicals might do to our young kids. Then again, I also didn't want them to get dengue fever or malaria. In addition to these big reasons, there were many other minor inconveniences that all added up to a desire to move.

Our new house is in a complex of about 35 houses, just a few blocks away from our old house. There are 3 playgrounds (very sparse in Jakarta) and lots of children. C is able to ride his bike on the streets and take walks without inhaling exhaust fume and dodging motorcycles. He has already met several of the neighborhood kids, one of whom is an older girl. That's right, C is charming a sweet 7 year old down the street. We'll definitely keep our eye on him when he hits puberty! The house is much more conducive to family living and the management company is amazing. And while the mosque's call to prayer is actually louder here, there is NO motorcycle noise! We've given up the grandness of our other house, an incredibly gorgeous yard, and more exposure to Indonesian culture, but we think we made the right decision.

I have lots of reasons why I haven't been blogging in so many weeks, the move being just one of them. I'll try to get to all the other reasons soon.