Our Home in Puebla

We moved into our own house on Monday, August 17th.  We had been in Mexico just over one week.  Those of you who have been worried about our safety will be happy to know that we rented a house in this gated community.  There are a couple guards at the gate 24 hours a day.  We kind of feel sorry for them -- it seems like such a boring job to open the gate for everyone.
Gated communities like this one are very common here.  We picked this one because it is where Marcela (and family) lives, and we thought it would be nice to be near friends.

This little fountain is right inside the gate.

One of the things that we really like about our neighborhood is the park in the center.  You can see the playground and water tower in this picture.  Each side of the water tower has a basketball hoop mounted on it, and the kids also like to hit tennis balls off the walls.  Just past it is a concrete basketball court which doubles as a soccer field.  Beyond it is a grass soccer field.
The park is in the center of our neighborhood, and there are streets with about ten row houses on each going out from the park like spokes on a wheel.

Here is the front of our house.  We are the second house from the corner (the one with the door open).  The second story bedroom window that you can see is the window to the boys room.  You can see trash sitting next to the door.  We put our trash out every morning and someone comes around and picks it up. 
Also notice that there is a pump in front of the house and we don't have grass in our driveway.  The week before we moved in, our landlady had a cistern built beneath the driveway to hold water.  They were still in the process of installing the pump when we moved in, so for the first three days of living here, we only had water three times a day which is when the water is turned on for the development.  With the cistern and pump we have water whenever we want.  Most people have tanks on their roofs (you can see two in this picture -- the black things).  Then you don't need a pump because they use gravity.  We don't know why our landlady chose the underground cistern and pump method.  We think the pump is kind of noisy.
Here is a picture of Joseph's bed in the boys room.  We decided to just put mattresses on the floor because we didn't want the hassel of buying and selling beds when we are only going to be here for a year.

This picture shows Stephen and Daniel's beds.  The kids had fun picking out their own sheets even though there wasn't a huge selection. 

This is Elena and Chiara's room.  They have some water damage in the corner of their room (because the roof leaks), but you can't see it in this picture.  Our landlady is trying to get it taken care of.

Here is a picture of the kids on our stairs.  The stairs are the only place in the house with carpet.  You rarely see carpet here in Mexico.  Everything is tile.  It sure makes it easier to clean up all the messes that Chiara makes.  At the top of the stairs is a landing with a sink.  This bathroom is just off the landing, and the kids' bedrooms are also upstairs.  The bathroom is bigger than the ones at Jose's house and the water pressure in the shower is fine.

Our bedroom is downstairs, and it is open to the main room of the house.  You can see a door in this picture which leads to another small bathroom.  We are lucky to have two bathrooms.  The owners of our house added the second one, but most of the homes in our neighborhood only have one.  We have put up a shower curtain so that our room is not so open.

 This kitchen area is right off of the main living area.  We purchased the refrigerator that you see in the picture.  It is smaller than what you would see in the states, but many people here have smaller ones than this.  You can see that we have a stovetop, but no oven or dishwasher.  We have purchased a tiny toaster oven.

For the first week we were in our house, we didn't have a table or sofa.  I really like having a round table.  You can fit a lot of people around it without it taking up a lot of space, and it feels so cozy to all sit around it.  Karl had picked up these chairs from a street vendor before we even moved in.  It cost less than $40 for all seven of them!  They are unfinished, but will work great for one year.  Our mattresses and refrigerator arrived the day we moved in (delivered from Walmart).  And we got electricity and gas that day.  Karl also purchased a car the same day we moved in -- a 1995 Ford Winstar minivan.  It's kind of ugly and he's had some repairs done already, but it should get us through the year. 

Here is the couch we bought.  It unfolds into a mat, so we will have a place for people to sleep when they come visit.  In this picture the boys and Chiara are watching a movie on the laptop.  We did finally find a cheap TV a couple of weeks ago.

Here is a funny story about moving into our new house.  The first night that we stayed in our house, Karl decided to lock the dead bolt, just to be safe. You have to use the key to lock it. The next morning we were supposed to meet Trini (the wife of the family where we stayed our first week), and she was going to take us to a public school and help us try to get our kids in because she knows the principal. Anyway, the point is that we had a deadline. So we get up the next morning and realize that the lock is stripped or something, and you can't unlock it from the inside. All the windows here have bars on them, so you can't just climb out a window. Karl looked out and didn't see anyone, and he was anxious since we were going to be late, so he didn't want to just wait until someone happened to walk by. So he went out our back door, which leads out onto a small tiled patio (4 ft X 5 ft), surrounded by three walls of our apartment and the shared wall of the adjoining apartment.  Our water heater and some washing mashine hook-ups are out there.  He climbed up the window bars and sills onto the roof of the first floor and from there shimmied around the overhang onto the roof of the second floor. There was no way down so he called to a lady leaving her house to alert the guards at the gate who came over and opened the door from the outside using the key I handed through the window, which worked just fine, And, lucky for Karl, there were some workers that had come in since he had climbed onto the roof, and they had a ladder which they let him use to get down. Now we just don't use the deadbolt. The door still locks automatically every time you close it.  Anyway, we actually were still able to catch Trini on her way to take the bus to work, so it worked out all right.