The second day we were here, we got started looking for a place to live. We can’t live in a hotel forever!!! Andrey had set up some meetings to look at some apartments. Apartments here are called “flats”. We spent the whole day looking at flats. Of course, we don’t have a car, so we had to walk all over town. We saw two flats that we liked and two flats that we didn’t like. Most of the flats cost about 1,000 Euro a month. Click here to figure out how many dollars that is. That seems like a lot of money, I know. But it includes ALL the bills, including the TV and the electricity. That means I can use the air conditioning all I want, and not pay extra for it!!

After looking at flats all day, we went back to the hotel, walked Guiseppe, and took a nice, long nap! Then we woke up, had a snack, and went back to sleep. The time here is opposite from San Diego. For example, when it is 10:00 at night here, it is 12:00 (lunch time) there. So we were all confused! We kept sleeping during the day and waking up in the middle of the night.

The third day we were here, we looked at a whole bunch of flats again. But we really did not like any of them. So, we looked again at two flats from yesterday that we liked. We picked one, signed up, and moved in, all in less than 2 hours. It is easy to move when you only have suitcases and no furniture!! Click in the pictures section on the side to see pictures of our new home.

Then, we set out to learn about our new city. Most of the weekend, we walked around to try to figure out where everything was. For example, where do you buy food? Well, there are markets for that. Only, the stores here are very small. You would never find a Wal Mart here. You have to go to different stores to buy all your food. We bought enough food to last a few days and went home and started cooking.

Since we don’t know the language too well (OK, we don’t know it at all, it sounds like Chinese to us!), it is hard to order at a restaurant without one of Mark’s partners to help us translate. I think we’ll figure this out quickly, since we like to eat!! We are starting to understand how things work here and we are feeling more comfortable about living here now. The first 3 days were a little difficult, but now we are doing better. It doesn’t feel so much like the moon!!