Getting settled in...

We moved into our apartment last Wednesday, and have spent much of the time since getting settled in. The place didn't come with any furniture, so we bought an air mattress to sleep on the first couple of nights (now we have a bed for visitors). When I got home from school Thursday, we went to Ikea for furniture. I have a whole new appreciation for Ikea's cheap, small furniture! We bought a bed, mattress, couch, table and chairs, pots and pans, silverware, wine and beer glasses, basically all of the essentials. It took us nearly 2 hours to shop for everything, so by the time we got to the checkout, the store was about 15 minutes from closing. Normally this wouldn't be a major issue, but of course, it turned into one. First, it did take awhile to ring everything up. Then, our credit card was denied. Now, I know we were making a large purchase in a foreign country, but we had the forsight of this and took the time to call the credit card company to let them know that we'd be here for a year and probably making some large purchases. We tried swiping the card a few times, only to have it denied. At this point the people behind us in line were looking kind of ansy. We put the order on hold so we could call our credit card company. Mark found the payphone, but for some reason couldn't make the call. Not wanting to wait another day for a bed and couch, we stepped back in line and used our debit card. To avoid being denied, since we didn't notify our bank about being here, we split the order in half and paid for each separately. Success! At this point the store was closing, but we still had to make arrangements for delivery. We filled out the delivery request and took it to the counter. There was an additional charge for delivery, but since it was a small charge, we decided to try our credit card again. Denied. No worries, we had our debit card. We ran the debit card, only this time it was also denied. Fortunately we have another bank and debit card, so we ran that one through and it worked. Nothing like following up a long, stressful evening with an hour long bus and train ride back to an apartment with no place to sit and an air mattress to sleep on. Twelve hours later, our frustrations turned to excitement as we got the call that the delivery truck was at our building. We rang them in and went down to help load the furniture into the lift (once again a new appreciation for small furniture). We got everything into the apartment and decided to hold off puting it all together because we needed to go shopping for appliances (the crazy thing is that most of the apartments here don't come with refrigerators). We walked down to a pawn shop, but didn't really find anything we liked and they didn't deliver. So we hopped on the bus to a large appliance strip mall. The first store that we stopped in had nice appliances, good prices, and a friendly salesman that said he'd be able to give us and even better deal since we were buying so much. Of course, it's not in our nature to buy from the first store we check, so we proceeded to 5-6 other stores before returning to the first store. We picked out a refrigerator, microwave, washing machine, and vacuum. Then we went to the telly section. By this point, my concept of money had been thrown out the window. We'd already spent a few thousand on our deposit, rent, and furniture, so what was another thousand right?! So, instead of looking at a small telly that would do the job, we were looking at a 42" flat panel with a great picture. It was only a few hundred dollars more than the 32" and it would look great in the apartment (or anywhere really). After seriously considering it, we were hit with a dose of reality that we would have to sell it or ship it a year later, and either way we'd lose a lot of money. Reluctantly, we bought the other appliances and left the store with a glimmer of what might have been. Then we headed back to the apartment, put together our furniture, carefully following Ikea's picture instructions (would it be that hard to put even a few words?), and sat on our couch (cheap, but uncomfortable) only to stare ahead at the empty spot where a 42" flat panel would fit perfectly. The next morning our appliances were delivered, so we went to the market to buy food for our refrigerator. The Queen Victoria market is huge! We went from booth to booth picking out fresh fruits, vegis, and herbs, and then went inside to the meats. It was like Mark's dream come true to see the beef prices; a kilo of t-bone steaks cost more than a kilo of chicken. By the way, buying food by the kilo is a little hard to get used to. We had enough food for a few nights of meals, but still had to go to Safeway to buy some of the things that they don't sell at the market. So, here we are, a bed to sleep on, a couch to sit on, a washing machine to wash our clothes, and a fridge full of food- life is good!