Oh what a day! We woke up and were finally able to see outside and what this place looks like. Colin has been keeping us laughing because he really doesn’t know anything but European style homes and living. Here at the base hotel everything is American style. As soon as we got into our room last night Colin went into the bathroom and got himself locked in there. He had never seen a round door knob before and then it had a push button lock on the knob, so of course he pushed it. I had to explain to him to unlock the door. This morning he couldn’t find the button to flush the toilet because it’s an American toilet with a handle, not a button. He also had to figure out the light switches, he didn’t know what they were for because they look different from the ones in Germany. I had to show him what they look like and how they work. LOL
We got up and unpacked some and got ready to go. Shelby’s sponsor picked us up and showed us around a little bit, drove us a few places to meet some people, and then let us borrow his island bomb (old, worn out, but perfect for the island, car) for a few days until we are able to buy one of our own. That is a HUGE help! We are RIGHT on the water and pretty much everywhere you look is ocean. After lunch we went over to the housing office to see what number we were on the wait list for a house. Turns out we’d move to number one and they were able to offer us two houses today. The first house was in a four-plex, and it was in the middle, which was not at all what we were wanting. We were both a little disappointed to see that it had next to no back yard, faced other yards out the back and didn’t really have a view of the ocean. We both got a little nervous after seeing that house and hoped the second one would be better. The second option turned out to be pretty much our base housing dream house. (If there is such a thing, using base housing and dream house in the same sentence just seems totally wrong) It is a duplex, not a quad, it has a large yard on the side and some in the back, it sits up on top of a hill and has an amazing view of the ocean. We pulled up outside and without even walking in I told Shelby I thought we had a winner. We were pretty excited to get that house and headed back over to the housing office to make it officially ours.
Our home!
The view from our backyard/back windows!
Now this is where the stupidity comes in. The house is vacant, and just needs a cleaner to come in before we move in. All the loaner furniture is there and in place with the exception of beds, it has no beds in the house. That is fine and good because housing will loan us some until our household goods arrive from Germany. The trouble is that they claim their first available delivery date to bring us some beds is on June 29th. So we couldn’t actually move in then until July 2nd. Well that was lame, so we suggested that we get two of the four beds in the first house we looked at, which were all in the garage, and they can just move them down to our house (which is just a block away, if not less). They said they cannot do that because they still don’t have time until the 29th. OK fine, WE will carry the beds down the street, it’s really not far at all. Nope they can’t let us do that either. So pretty much the house has everything we need except beds and is ready to move into but we would still have to live in the hotel for two weeks until they could deliver beds. The housing lady seemed clearly annoyed with the furniture coordinator who was being a pain in the butt. So we asked her what if we said we would move in without the beds there, would that be ok. She agreed to that if we put in writing that we accepted the house without beds and we knew we would not be getting any until the 29th. Done! We can go buy an air mattress, if no one in Shelby’s squadron has one we can borrow, and Colin can sleep on the couch downstairs. It’s worth it to not have to live in the hotel for an extra two weeks over a silly bed! It makes no sense.
We got the housing ordeal all straight and then moved on to the phone company. We needed to schedule internet hook up at the house now that we had one, and get ourselves a SIM card for the iphone so it has a Portuguese number. That was a bust. You cannot buy just internet, you have to have their cable TV to get internet. We don’t want TV, so I’m telling myself I’m paying 60 Euro a month for internet. Ugh! The cell phone didn’t work out, T-Mobil Germany was supposed to unlock my phone after we finished our contract before moving, but they did not. So the new SIM card won’t work and a new iphone here is a staggering 500 Euro. Um, NO! So we’ll work on the cell phone thing again tomorrow, we ran out of time today. We did end up heading to Praia, one of the towns right outside the base, looking for cell phone service and assistance. We walked around downtown, saw the beach and then ate dinner down there before driving back to base. It was a long, busy, but mostly productive day.
Pics from Praia...
The view from our backyard/back windows!
Now this is where the stupidity comes in. The house is vacant, and just needs a cleaner to come in before we move in. All the loaner furniture is there and in place with the exception of beds, it has no beds in the house. That is fine and good because housing will loan us some until our household goods arrive from Germany. The trouble is that they claim their first available delivery date to bring us some beds is on June 29th. So we couldn’t actually move in then until July 2nd. Well that was lame, so we suggested that we get two of the four beds in the first house we looked at, which were all in the garage, and they can just move them down to our house (which is just a block away, if not less). They said they cannot do that because they still don’t have time until the 29th. OK fine, WE will carry the beds down the street, it’s really not far at all. Nope they can’t let us do that either. So pretty much the house has everything we need except beds and is ready to move into but we would still have to live in the hotel for two weeks until they could deliver beds. The housing lady seemed clearly annoyed with the furniture coordinator who was being a pain in the butt. So we asked her what if we said we would move in without the beds there, would that be ok. She agreed to that if we put in writing that we accepted the house without beds and we knew we would not be getting any until the 29th. Done! We can go buy an air mattress, if no one in Shelby’s squadron has one we can borrow, and Colin can sleep on the couch downstairs. It’s worth it to not have to live in the hotel for an extra two weeks over a silly bed! It makes no sense.
We got the housing ordeal all straight and then moved on to the phone company. We needed to schedule internet hook up at the house now that we had one, and get ourselves a SIM card for the iphone so it has a Portuguese number. That was a bust. You cannot buy just internet, you have to have their cable TV to get internet. We don’t want TV, so I’m telling myself I’m paying 60 Euro a month for internet. Ugh! The cell phone didn’t work out, T-Mobil Germany was supposed to unlock my phone after we finished our contract before moving, but they did not. So the new SIM card won’t work and a new iphone here is a staggering 500 Euro. Um, NO! So we’ll work on the cell phone thing again tomorrow, we ran out of time today. We did end up heading to Praia, one of the towns right outside the base, looking for cell phone service and assistance. We walked around downtown, saw the beach and then ate dinner down there before driving back to base. It was a long, busy, but mostly productive day.
Pics from Praia...
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