Leaving Home

The week started out like any other, I roamed around the house for the first few days but then it got better, Thursday I went to Natanya to my friends house to start actual looking for an apartment.

The Trip There:

Daled (the one I helped throw up at my party) came over to bring back a book, take a few CD's with some things for her new computer and say hi in the process. I tried to catch Aner on the phone all morning to ask when I could come over, I finally woke him up at around 2:00pm and he said I could come at around 3pm. Daled and I left my house at 2:30 and hitchhiked to Afula (I need a drivers license), the guy who picked us up was smoking a joint the whole way and listening to Pink Floyd, it was the Stoners Mobile. We got to Afula just in time for my buss so no long goodbyes, I ran to the buss just in time, I paied my money and sat down. The buss drive went by fairly quick, so quick in fact that I nearly missed by stop. I was reading a book which also happens to be one of the strangest books I've ever read but that's not our subject for today. Anyway, I was so consumed by trying to understand the book that I didn't notice we had arrived at my buss stop till the buss closed the doors and was about to continue driving. After a semi embarrassing escape from the buss I called Aner and found that he hadn't even made a start at leaving his girlfriends house, to start the search with me for an apartment.

What We Did There:

I was at the other side of the country and my host wasn't home so I called out third room mate, Koby, he just got back from school ("hashlamat bagruyot" he just needs to complete a few tests to actually have his highschool diploma, he finished school 3-4 years ago.). I walked the not so short walk over to his house and there we started our search for an apartment. We must have searched 15 different Israeli websites that advertise apartments, we only found about 4 apartments though that seemed in our price range and the size we wanted. Finally at 6pm Aner with his girlfriend got back to Natanya, we met them at a pizza place right next to the place they were dropped off and ate a pizza pie. Then we called the first apartment we planned on going to see. In the add the apartment was said to have 3 bedrooms but when we got there we found that the supposable 3 bedrooms were the kitchen, living room and one bedroom, we left that place in a hurry and started calling the rest of the list to find out if by 3 bedrooms they meant 1, 2 or actually 3. We found out that none of them actually had 3 bedrooms, we weren't about to give up yet, we had only started!

We decided to roam the streets and look for "For Sale/For Rent" signs, after a bit over an hour we had found a few signs and looked at a couple more apartments but nothing really good for us. Aner decided we should take a detour around some building and see if maybe it had any apartments for rent, we walked around it and sure enough it did. We called and after a few minutes they arranged for one of the nabours to open it up for us to take a look at the apartment, not only was in about 30 feet from where they work but it was a great apartment! The electric was shut off so we looked around the apartment with the light from our lighters, it had 3 big bedrooms, a huge living room/patio, a nice and big kitchen, 2 bathrooms and it was in great condition, as an added bonus it also was partly furnished including a washing machine, a refrigerator, 2 stoves and 2 ovens. We loved the apartment but were readying ourselves for a disappointment as soon as we thought about the cost of living in such a place. We called the owners once again to assure them that we were 100% interested and then we asked the price...*deep breath*...*exhale*...$580 a month!!! That was only $30 more expensive that most the other apartments we had looked at and this one was 100 times bigger and better!

The Final Results:

We arranged for a meeting with the owners brother for the next morning, his sister who owns the place lives about 2 hours away so she couldn't meet up in person. Her brother met us 8:15am and took us to have another look at the place in the daylight so we could actually see the apartment and go over some things with him. I'll spare you the details, till this moment I'm still thinking how this is too good to be true. We left the apartment and I stayed around a few more hours after we left the apartment so that Aner and Koby could open up the disc store they work in. We hung around and talked about our near future in our soon to be apartment, we called the owner and arranged a meeting for Saturday night to go over the contract and a few other things concerning the apartment. That means that tonight we're gonna be doing the finishing touches before our move and within the next few days we're going to be in our new apartment!

Wish us luck, we may need it!


I'll be back to update on the apartment situation sometime this week!