A House At Last

Well, friends, it’s been an *interesting* week for Jon over in Ireland. The good news is: we have a house! The bad news is: it was quite the trial to get it.

As I told you in my last post, Jon’s flight got delayed going in to Ireland. He ended up being delayed so long that they had to book him on a completely different flight on a completely different airline. In all the flight mess, though, the airline forgot to book Jon a connecting flight from London to Cork. He had to buy a separate ticket in London so he could complete his journey–I’m sure I’ll be having some fun conversations with United Air about how we get reimbursed for that. Oh yeah, and they lost his luggage. His bags went to Chicago–even though Jon never did–and, 4 days later, still have not found their way to Ireland. Not the best start to this trip.

Surely after that horrendous travel experience, the house-hunting had to go better—right?

Nope.

Jon spent the first 2 days he was in Ireland just trying to get a hold of people so he could schedule viewings of the houses we were interested in. Nobody was even available to let him in to a single house those first days. Then, when he finally got to see his first houses on Wednesday he learned that the vast majority of the houses we liked had already been rented out. On those two days that nobody was available to show him the houses. Hmmmm…. Then, to make matters worse, almost all of the houses that were still available did not allow pets. Double ouch.

Long story short, our list of 42 potential houses got whittled down to 2 (TWO!) that met our minimum criteria and were actually still available to be rented. Going in to this we had prayed that God would open the door where he wanted us and close the doors where he didn’t. Sometimes God has a very direct way of answering our prayers. Doors were literally being slammed shut in our faces everywhere we looked!

Ironically, the two houses that we had to choose between had the exact same floor plan, were in the same general area of town, and were listed for the same price. When it came down to it, the house we chose is in a nicer neighborhood, has nicer finishings, and has been better maintained. In the end, it was a pretty simple choice.

So, with no further ado, here is our house! It is a fully furnished 3 bedroom / 3 bath townhouse in the neighborhood of Rochestown (kind of like the Bellevue of Cork City). It backs up to a sports complex that has soccer fields, a golf course, bowling, tennis, etc. David will even have a view of the soccer fields from his bedroom window 🙂 There is also a nice park in front of our house where we can throw the ball for Bota. It is walking distance to a bus stop and a bike path (this path actually goes right past Jon’s office), so hopefully we won’t have to rely too much on our cars (gas is VERY expensive over there). We’ll even have a couple of couches if anyone wants to come out for a visit!