Moving soon

Well, we still have internet so I'm not sure what was going on the other day.

Oh, this picture is of the pallati (apartment building) we live in now.

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Gabriel is all better now, I think. Valerie is still coughing but slept 11 hours straight last night. Yay!

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We might move this weekend. We're definitely going to move, just not sure exactly when. Terry has a 2-week evaluation in Elbasan, about 1.5 hours from Tirana, the first two weeks in March. We'll probably go with him for part of the time at least. So I'm trying to think when would be the best time to move the kids over to the new place taking that trip into consideration.

We decided on an apartment about 15 minutes' walk from this one; it's a great location and a newer building. We'll be on the 4th floor so no leaky roof. The view is nowhere near as spectacular but the street is very quiet so that's nice. We've taken Valerie over to play a number of times and have started moving some of our stuff over little by little (it's been unoccupied for about a month - the previous tenants were missionaries at the church we attend here so that's how we found out about it). She loves playing there and has learned to refer to it as the "new house."

I'm not really looking forward to moving but I am looking forward to not sharing our bedroom with Gabriel - it just gets tricky and I'm tired of it.

The landlord here is very sad we're leaving; apparently Americans have a reputation here for being good tenants. The downside of that is getting a lot of pressure from potential landlords. Our new landlord actually bought brand new bedding specifically for Gabriel and Valerie (Barbie Princesses for V, Cars and Spiderman for G), and replaced the glass-topped coffee table with a sturdy wooden one in anticipation of toddlers running around and climbing on things - before we made a commitment to take the place.

It will probably take us a little while to get internet set up in the new place, so once again I'm not sure how much I'll be online once that happens. I wish we could just add another bedroom to this apartment - and fix the leaky roof, of course. I'm getting all sentimental about it since it was our first home in Albania. Ah, the memories...! All of... five months ago! I may be overdoing the nostalgia just a little bit...! (...as well as the elipses... oh well...!)