On The Move!!!

Last weekend, we spent a little time packing up everything we brought (as well as the amazing amount of things we have already purchased in the short time we have lived here), and moved a couple of floors down to our permanent apartment.  We will be spending the next year living at the Hotel Kristal - Zack & Cody style.  

One of the main differences between our temporary apartment and the permanent one is the view -

From the old view, we could watch Emilie play tennis!

We could see Emilie's school!

 

With the old view, we had a Mosque with the bullhorn pointed directly at us so it was almost like we had a personal prayer (5 times/day)!

And Our New View - 

We live in South Jakarta and face North.  On a clear day, we can see the downtown Jakarta skyline.

Another exciting difference is the stove!

This was how we got to cook for our first 3 weeks here. Needless to say, we ate out a lot!

Now we have this small oven and four burners!

We have also added a washing machine/dryer combo unit!  It is fun to run the wash cycle and dry cycle all in one, but it takes a little over 3 hours to do one load of laundry.  

We couldn't figure out why there were holes in all of the shelves of this little cabinet in our entryway.  We finally asked and were laughed at as we were told, this cabinet is for our shoes!

Dustin's Room! 

 

Emilie's Room!

The Master bedroom and bathroom

Our dishwasher!

Emilie emptying the dishwasher!

This is our giant refrigerator!

 We are working on adding some personal touches to make this feel a bit more like home, but it is nice to finally be in our "permanent" home!

Here are a few pictures from around the hotel.

We have almost been here a month and have made some observations on the pros and cons of living in a hotel:

• Housekeeping - Not only does our house get cleaned everyday, but we don't have to change sheets or wash towels; Plus we get free (really cheap) toilet paper!
• Four restaurants and a deli in the building! As residents, we get a discount at all of the eating establishments.  This is great but, even after only one month, we are already getting tired of the menus.
• Swim up bar...need I say more?
• The nice big pool is GREAT!  So is not having to clean it, but public pools always have a few drawbacks - plus being in a foreign country means speedos :-0
• No electric bill, water bill, internet bill, cable bill, gas bill...But this also means your are sharing the very weak internet signal with a few hundred other guests.
• The noise - Although I'm sure the noise would be equally bad if we were living in a regular apartment building.
• You get free artwork you would never in a million years choose for yourself. Like this lovely thing...

And finally - In true moving tradition, we enjoyed a pizza delivery the evening of our move.  The pizza was surprisingly similar to American Pizza and came with a generous side of ketchup packets!