Settling In...Again!

We started moving into our new apartment this past weekend a little bit. We moved and cleaned a little each day. On Tuesday the gas went out for some reason at our old apartment, and since we no longer had hot water or a way to cook there, we went ahead and moved into our new apartment. At the end of this week, the apartment is mainly set up with what we already have. Our living room is all furnished with our new purchases from Ikea and our guest room/office is ready as well. All that these rooms are missing are wall decorations.

Our bedroom and Eliana's bedroom will take more time. We are waiting on our crate to clear customs. We found out it arrived to Lisbon on June 4. We would normally be able to get our things this upcoming week, but there are two big holidays this week (Monday and Thursday) so all businesses will be closed, so it'll probably be two weeks until we get our crate.

Until then, we're testing out our guest room which is comfortable, so plan on coming to visit us! We're also devoid of a table and chairs and china cabinet. We're getting a local carpenter to make these things for us. One thing we love about Portugal is how family-oriented everyone is and how they work enough to live but don't live to work. They live for family and close friends instead. While this is great, it means no one is in a rush to get things done business-wise, so we really have no idea when our furniture will be done. We're hoping by June 20 we'll have our table and a few chairs (it's the date our carpenter's told us when they realized we had nothing to eat on) and that the rest of the chairs and china cabinet will be done by July 1. We'll see, though! Until then, we're eating in our beach chairs by the window.

We've met one of our neighbors so far. This upcoming week we're going to make cookies and take them to the 3 other apartments on our floor to introduce ourselves to everyone. We'll also take some down to the doorman on the first floor.

Pray we start to connect with our neighbors and can make friends right here where we live. Pray we get settled into our apartment and truly make it our home, not just an apartment. Pray we can stay focused on language learning and our real work while we are getting our home set up (we don't want it to distract us too much from the main thing).

Pictures will come soon once we get more set up!

And some people have asked for our address. If you want to send us a letter or package by mail, you can send it to:

Jonathan & Bethany Sharp

Largo da República da Turquia 5, 10B

Lumiar

1750-250     Lisboa, Portugal