Home Tour

We have one of those awkward living situations where I don't know whether to call our place a house or an apartment. It looks like a house on the outside, but we do have some downstairs neighbors living in the "basement," so I guess it's really two apartments? Well, whatever it is, it's home, and we like it a lot. So for no other reason than that we need to put these pictures somewhere and that our families want to see where we spend all our time, enjoy our humble home tour:

^^This is the view from where we pull into our little "parking lot" with our car. The column on the left is the edge of a little trash-can fence that keeps out the rats. We have our own trash can here! We've come so far.

^^A view from the street. Don't mind the brown grass--it's the dry season. The door on the left is the door we go through to get into our apartment. The door on our right leads into the guest bedroom, but it's barred shut for security reasons. We don't even have the keys for it. Oh, and also, that's our adorable car right there.

^^This is what we see when we go through the front door. The stairway leads to the downstairs apartment. The door on the left is to our own personal laundry room (with a dryer and everything!!), and the door on our right is the door to our apartment.

 ^^This is our living room, which is to the left when you walk through the front door. The closet doors on the right open to a pantry. Well, they actually open to a sink/kitchen area because our two-bedroom apartment was originally built as two one-bedroom apartments, and this was the kitchen area of one of them. We're extremely glad for the extra space though. There's like no place to store food in our actual kitchen. Oh, and that door leads out to the veranda. And hey look! AC! We hardly ever run it in the living/kitchen area because we have a decent breeze going through our always-open windows, but it's nice to have on when company comes over or when I have a million dishes to do and the oven is on.

 ^^This is the view from the other side of the living room. We brought back those vinyl gold stars from the states to add a "homey touch." They're borderline tacky, but homey all the same. All the rest of the furniture/decor (besides a few rugs) were provided. On the left before you go into the kitchen, there's a door leading to our bedroom. Please take note of the Grenadian furniture. Grenadian furniture = wood and flimsy cushions. Not great for napping, but super for doing short bouts of editing.

^^This is the kitchen. The fridge is half-sized, but the place smells normal and our oven works great, so we're living the high life.

 ^^The best place to be when it's not the middle of the day--the veranda! We keep our seashell collection on our little table, and we probably eat half of our meals out here.

 ^^The guest bedroom/Jared's study room. The family that lived here before us had two adorable toddlers. Hence the vinyl. Oh, and the light on the right is coming in through the open door that you can see from the front of the house. Also, there's a little bathroom off of this room.

^^Our bedroom! Clearly I took a nap on the bed right before this little photo shoot. We love our bedroom here. It's roomy and light and I have a nice vanity area and a great desk and a cute little rug we brought from the states. Also, bedside tables! Again, it's the little things. Please take note of the yarn ball in our AC unit. The rotater is broken on it, so if we want any air to come out we have to prop it open with the yarn ball. We'd get it fixed, but this feels so minor compared to the other Grenada issues that we've had, so we'll probably just let it be.

^^A different view of our bedroom. Our room is identical to the guest bedroom, because again, our apartment used to be two mirroring apartments. The door on the right leads to our little bathroom.

^^Despite its size, it's WAY better than the sketchy bathroom in our old apartment that had random holes in the floor.

^^The hill leading down into our beautiful backyard! You can't tell me you don't think it's beauitful. The rainforest! The lawn! The flowers!

^^This is the row of trees in our backyard. I think the tree on the right is a plumeria tree. You guys. Those flowers. They emit my favorite smell in the whole world. Jared's too, I think. The best thing ever is sitting on our veranda when a breeze catches the plumeria whiff and carries it up to us. Sigh. It's heaven.
 ^^Oh, and there's our apartment again, from the back. It's the one up top. Hi, home!

And there you have it. I don't really have anything else to say about that. I'll just echo again that we really like it here. Really. Also because I feel like this should be written down, a random story! Jared got home from campus about an hour ago. It was dark, but when he got in he found a flashlight, grabbed my arm, and took me outside to show me something.

As we were leaving, one of our downstairs neighbors pulled in. "Hey, did you see that thing eating that thing on the road?" Jared asked her. She hadn't, but I began to get worried. Jared kept leading me up the road to show me what he had seen during his bus ride home. Eventually we came to "the thing." Jared shined his light on it, and lo and behold, a half-eaten rat.

"Aw man!" Jared said, looking put out. "There was another rat eating it, but I guess it's gone now." We turned to leave, but then Jared's face lit up and he shined the light a little to the left onto . . . another dead rat! "There it is!" He said. "It must have gotten hit by a bus!" Oh, the romance. Oh, the gag reflex. Rats.