Apartment hunting

Thursday morning was spent all at home, except for a brief walk down to Conad to buy some produce and a few other things. It was good to have some down time. We got to the Institute at the regular time, and the Benincosas showed up right away to help Billy prep for a job interview. Later in the afternoon they would help Rhenald and George. They clearly love their self-reliance assignment, which is nice for them and the people they are helping.

Ugo, Rhenald, Benincosas

In the afternoon we went out for a couple of hours to look at new possible apartments for the Institute, because we are often bursting at the seams here. We saw three of them, each larger than what we have, but only two of which are really possibilities -- one of them has probably close to a year of renovation before it could possibly be inhabited. The first one is about three blocks away, further from the train station. Its price is reasonable for downtown Rome (3200€ per month, going up to 4000€ after a year), but parking would be a problem. The final one is a bit further away still and has the parking issue, but it is in great shape. Unfortunately its price is far more expensive, about 9000€ per month once you include taxes. Ugo's superior Franck really liked it because he thinks we could move in almost as-is, but that price difference seems too high to us, and there are several things we don't like about it (some of which could be fixed by renovation). Later in the afternoon Ugo ran into Signora Chirra, who is very unhappy with the group of doctors who will be renting her place downstairs; they can't seem to make their mind up to get started and keep trying to postpone paying rent. She said she is thinking of giving them back their deposit, in which case Ugo told her we would definitely be interested. We'll see, but that would be a very welcome miracle. The build-out cost is substantial, but the rent would be only 3000€ per month, covering the upfront fees in under a year compared to the expensive one. We will keep looking and see what happens. The nice thing is that Dee and I got to walk quite bit outside in the crisp air, which felt good. It was supposed to rain, so we carried umbrellas all around but never needed them. Jomar came and covered for us while we were out.

In the evening, we had a big group of kids for the English class, including several new girls who were really sharp and cute. Not sure how they found out about it, but it was great to see. We could use more females around here, since it is common for there to be mostly guys at our activities. For the first time in quite a while, there were enough people for English class that the missionaries split the group into beginners and advanced. Afterwards everyone enjoyed Dee's freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and we had fun visiting with the new girls.

 

It was a very busy day, with lots of messaging from all over, which is a good thing. I finally found a little time to (almost) finish my Friday night lesson prep. After English class, a bunch of the kids stayed after to play games for a while. Ugo went out to dinner with his bosses and then came back to visit with us for a while. 

My sister-in-law Donna is in LA now to help with her parents. Her old laptop had a problem that stopped it from booting. I did some remote diagnosis on the phone, but it came back to life on its own. We then did a full backup, ran a surface scan, and everything seemed fine. Strange, but a happy ending, at least for now.