I tried typing this last part up way back on the 28th, but Xanga decided to eat it.  So frustrating.  I'm finally getting back to things now.  Sorry to have dragged this out for so long, but life has been kinda low-key lately, so there's not much else to write about at the moment.

Anyway, now for the rest of the story...

With things the way they were, we basically only had the duplex as a real contender at this point.  As previously mentioned, my two roommates had already seen the upper floor of the place, but it would be too small, so now all three of us were looking at the main level.  The basement which was mostly finished except for a small area would also be exclusively ours, and the best part of all was that we'd be getting all of this space for only $20 more a month than our apartment.  We had definitely never found a deal nearly this good with any other place we'd seen. 

Another thing on the pros list was the location.  It was in one of my favorite areas of NE Minneapolis.  Actually, it was the same block my mom grew up on (although much further north--the area where she actually lived has long been a major freeway).  In my family, namely amongst my mom, her siblings, and my grandparents, there's always been a lot of fond talk of memories about growing up in this area.  Sure, a lot has changed since the 50's, but a few of the same stores are still there, including a few Italian markets where my grandma always bought all her fresh Italian meats and produce.  They're still owned by the same families.  The neighborhood is still in good condition and very safe.  Just driving around we saw a lot of people walking their dogs, watering their flower gardens and talking to their neighbors.  You just don't see much of that in the suburbs anymore.  I could tell the people really cared about their community.  There was a beautiful park at the end of the street, and a very convenient bus line would be right there as well.  The cherry on top was that this was a cute, little stucco house.  I love stucco houses!  They're just charming to me, and I'd rather have a small, cozy, older home than a new one that's just a big box with no personality.  Yep, everything seemed wonderful.  I never thought I'd be able to live in this neighborhood at this part of my life.

Ahh, but then there was a catch.  The inside of the house.  It wasn't "the worst house ever", and yes, we're young people hoping to temporarily rent a place for a year or two.  We don't need a palace, but at the same time my heart sank as we were guided through the rest of the rooms and the basement.  There were some maintenance repairs that would need to be made before we moved in, but the owner would take care of them.  Still, the place left very little to be desired in my opinion.  The house had not been well taken care of, and I just couldn't help thinking that our apartment was leaps and bounds better.  Sure, there was a lot of storage space, and it had three bedrooms which would be ideal, but there were a lot of things that just didn't sit well with me.  At the same time, I didn't want to write it off all together.  Maybe it just needed some time to grow on me for me to see and appreciate its potential. 

To give you a perspective on things, this all occurred on Monday, August 17th, and we decided to make a decision by the end of the week and continue to look at a few more places if we were able.  I pretty much exhausted all of Craigslist that night, made some phone calls on Tuesday, and since one of the girls has a Bible Study here on Tuesday nights we set up appointments to see places Wednesday and Thursday of that week.  Long story short, every place we saw fell short of being a better deal than the duplex as far as price and space although they were all in better condition.  

That Friday, after seeing all the other places, my roommates decided that they wanted to live in the duplex, but I still felt pretty uneasy about things.  Very strongly so, actually.  I could see that for my roommates, it would be a great fit for them.  The location would be more convenient for their jobs and church, and they were needing the extra storage space much more than me.  I had always thought the three of us would stay together, but people aren't always going to be on the same page when it comes to these things, which happens in life, but now I didn't know where I should go.  I considered maybe just moving back home for a little while.  Maybe I just hadn't given the duplex a fair shake and needed to bite the bullet and just move there.  I had racked my mind on these and many other questions throughout the week, but it just didn't seem to be panning out. 

Here's where God totally did a number on me.

I had gone out for the night with some friends to get my mind off of housing things.  When I came home that night, I decided to check my Facebook page one last time, and found I had a message in my inbox.  It turned out that I had received an offer from a old college friend about living with her and her roommates!  I had remembered contacting one of them a few weeks before to ask it they knew of any housing leads.  As things would turn out, one of them would be moving out soon, and they had an open spot!  After weighing (and praying) things out, meeting up with the girls, and checking out the place over the weekend, things were starting to come together, and a few days later I got the official OK that I could move in with them!  With my roommates and I having signed on to two extra months at our place (as mentioned in an earlier post), moving would be postponed from the end of August to October. 

As of now, moving day for everyone is in roughly two weeks on October 17th.  In the end, things couldn't have worked out better.  My roommates have found a place that fits what they want and need, and it looks like I've found a great place as well.  That offer from my friend at the last minute couldn't have come at any later timing because had she not contacted me, I would have either been signing on and moving into a place I did not particularly care for or would have been moving back home.

I find it so ironic now that my current roommates and I have searched high and low all over the Cities, and this place that I'll soon be living was right under my nose the entire time!  It's not even five minutes away!  I will now be living in a great, four bedroom house with a bunch of wonderful girls who I've gotten to know throughout college who are a true blessing to know and who inspire me in so many ways.  The house is also on my current bus line, and the icing on the cake is that it will be quite a bit cheaper than my current apartment!  An entire house that's cheaper than an apartment?!  God is pretty amazing.

With that said, I will have some packing to do in the next week or two, and although I am a little sad to be parting ways with Katie and Laura, I'm glad we could all find places that work so well for us.  I am really excited to see what God has in store as I start this next chapter of my life.

This will be old news to a lot of you if you've talked to me recently, but for those of you who keep in touch with me mostly through my blog or those I haven't seen in a while, I thought I'd fill you in on what's been going on in the ever-evolving search for a new place to call home.  Initially, I had planned to chronicle how things developed as they happened, but that never worked out.  My roommates and I do have a place to live as I am writing this, but I thought I'd still tell the story for those who'd like to know how that all came about.  Of course, when writing it all out I realized it would be pretty long, so I decided to break it into two parts.  Here's the first half.

As I mentioned a post or two ago, my two roommates and I were hoping to move and find something along-the-lines of a duplex or house for rent. Ideally, we were looking for a place with 2-3 bedrooms, a good amount of storage space (the primary reason we're re-locating), a good-sized kitchen since one of my roommates loves to cook and entertain, and a location that is a good fit for commuting to our jobs and church. Also, because we are three girls, living in a safe area would be good.  

We started the process in July, scouring mostly Craigslist, but hitting up other housing sites as well.  The three of us camped out on the couch one Sunday afternoon with our laptops and called places to set up appointments as if it were some kind of phone-a-thon.  It was pretty hit-and-miss, however, with only a few places getting back to us to schedule viewings.  We initially narrowed our search to SW Minneapolis because it's by far one of the nicer and safer areas of the city, and one of my roommates works in South Minneapolis, so it would be a better commute for her.  Southwest Mpls has a lot of historic charm and personality.  It almost feels like a small town within the city.  There are a lot of cute shops and cafes (sorry, my accent key doesn't work), parks, trails, etc.  For those of you from the Twin Cities, Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet are within walking distance or at most a short drive away, and that would have been awesome to enjoy.  For all of these reasons and many more, it has become one of my favorite areas in Minnesota, so to live there would be awesome.  The area can be pretty pricey though, especially the houses on or near the lakes, and buying an entire house would be impossible cost-wise unless you're uber uber wealthy, but renting a condo or duplex would be manageable.  Long story short, in the end, we had to rule out SW Mpls because the places we were finding were either the same square footage as what we currently had (or less) or were just a bit too high for our budgets (if not both of these factors).  Even two-bedroom places were way beyond what we were willing to pay.  Since space was the big thing we were looking for, it just didn't make sense to move into some place smaller or if it was only a little bigger but hundreds of dollars beyond our budget.

Still liking the SW area of the Cities, we tried our hand at looking in the surrounding suburbs, but nothing jumped out at us.  We saw places that would give us the space we were looking for, but condition-wise, our apartment was a lot better.  Things are a bit more set in stone when renting.  You can't just rip up 30-year-old carpet or take down gaudy wallpaper and paint the walls.  Well, you probably can at some places, but not most.  What you see is what you get.  We did see a few places that miigghhhtt have worked, but for one reason or another we slowly ruled them out, so it was back to the drawing board.

With August now in full-swing, time was ticking to find a place to live because our lease would be up at the end of the month.  There were still a lot of uncertainties.  Probably the biggest was that one of my roommates had been considering moving back to Wisconsin since January to go back to school.  If we went down to two people, that would change the dynamics of what we were looking for tremendously--space-wise, cost-wise, location-wise.  It was like trying to run a marathon on streets made of Jello.  Everything kept shifting.  Eventually, she did decide that she would stay with us.  

Right about this time, we found what seemed to be the perfect place.  It was in a Northern suburb (your hometown, Fen and Annemarie) which caught us by surprise because we were not looking in that area at all since it would be so out-of-the way for being somewhere close to our jobs and churches (it had been listed as being in Minneapolis).  We decided to check it out anyway, though.  It was an entire house for rent, over 2,500 sq. feet (our apartment is 950), four bedrooms, in beautiful condition, and $150 less than our apartment!!  Too good to be true, right?  The woman who lived there was moving to London for her job and would be there for a year or two.  Originally, the asking price had been much more appropriate for a house of that size and condition, but since she was needing to move and time was running out, she slashed the price in half.  We were waiting to hear back on when we could come look at the house, but then the listing disappeared from every site we saw it on which most likely meant it had sold.  The woman never did get back to us, and truth be told, there were signs it could have been a scam.  I guess it's a popular thing to say in a listing that you're moving to the UK for a job, and then say you can't meet potential buyers in person, working through someone else which is what this woman was doing.  Craigslist and other sites always warned to be wary of places where the owner couldn't meet you in person, and there were a few other things that seemed fishy.  If it was a valid listing it was a bummer though because it was by far the best place we had seen, but the location would have been very inconvenient for a number of reasons.  We knew there was a better fit for us out there somewhere, and I just kept giving it to God and trusted He would lead us to the right place because I think at that point things were looking pretty iffy on finding even a somewhat decent place in time for our lease to run out.

On a final and totally different note, I decided to change things up a bit on here as far as layout and the the look of things.  The old look was getting, well...old, and I needed to freshen things up and get a second-wind.  I'll see how long this lasts.  I may still change blog sites somewhere down the line. (Oh, and for whatever reason, I am still seeing my old look on here sometimes, so let me know if you can see the new one.)  Thanks!

"It's not about the destination, it's the journey that counts." 
"A journey begins with a single step." 

These phrases have popped into my head recently, and as I said in my first entry back on here after my long hiatus, there were some changes on the way, and that's what I would like to cover in this post.  It seems like this stage in life (the 20's) is begging the average person, "Where will you end up?"  It's an exciting and equally flustering time to be alive.  I feel like I've lived these past six years as a perpetual nomad, haha.  I've lived in two dorms, two on-campus apartments, and two apartments with a variety of different people, some people for just a year, some for more.  I haven't spent the last six years with all of my belongings in one location, and I've moved every three to nine months save for the last eleven where I've lived in my current apartment.  Eleven months being a record?  I laugh at myself.  Well, after August, that record will be broken and it'll be off-to-the-races again for a new destination.  Thankfully, I'll be with the same two girls I'm with now.  Yep, the next four weeks will be filled with brown paper packages tied up with string (or sticky packing tape), and no, that's not one of my favorite things. Ok, so it kinda secretly is.  I have this weird inner paradox where I want to put down roots like nobody's business, and I simultaneously want to live out of a suitcase.  It's this strange malady that I've been nursing ever since I got my first plane ticket as a kid.

The Russians have this wonderful tradition they partake in whenever they're about to go on a long journey.  They sit down on a chair with their suitcase at their feet.  Just sit there in silence for a minute or two, letting the moment sink in.  It's one of those cultural customs that makes me inwardly convinced that I must be secretly Russian somewhere in my DNA.  I'm the contemplative-type.  The one who needs to process things slowly, methodically, and preferably in writing in some medium whether it be scribbling in a binder amidst notes for a class, scratching something on a post-it note, or cranking it out on a keyboard.  A proud introvert at heart, I need to get away from people and this crazy world for some amount of time each day and just take a deep breath for-goodness-sake.

Destination is an interesting word.  I want to say that "destination" and "destiny" come from the same root, but I'm too lazy to look it up as I'm not a word guru.  They both imply that something is moving toward some goal or final location.  The past couple of years could have easily been categorized as "destination: graduation" or "destination: (insert country here)" but now things are taking on a little different shape like "destination: career" and *gasp* destination: marriage (Lord-willing).  The merry-go-round keeps on a-spinnin'.  The openings of new chapters and closings of old ones are fast and furious and often overlapping.  I love the thrill of the unknown, and yet I will be honest and say I have my moments of wanting to yank out all my hair in fist fulls (and I have thick, long, unruly, Italian hair). 

And so the future stretches out before me, and I am equally giddy and a tad nervous.  I mean, it's all gotta pan-out somehow.  My roommates and I are duplex and rental house hunting, and we're excited to leave apartment-dwelling behind even though there has been nothing but good things to say about where we currently live.  The girls have lived here for three years having been out of college for two, and I've lived with them for just shy of one and just graduated in May.  It's time to move on.  On to bigger and better things.  Where we'll end up has yet to be determined, and the next four weeks will sort that out.

Speaking of moving, I have contemplated over the last couple of days about relocating this blog.  It's bittersweet, but it may be time to pack things up and go somewhere else.  Then again, maybe I just need to change things up a bit visually and try a new look on here.  After all, it's been this way for almost the past three years!  The vast majority of people I used to read on here have either shut down their blogs or moved elsewhere.  Regardless on what I decide on, I still plan on keeping this one open so I can read and comment on those of you who are still on Xanga.  This has been my writing home for five years now, and that's an accomplishment I'm not about to erase with a swish of the delete key.  When I started this thing, I had just completed my first year of college and was three days away from embarking on my first overseas trip to Belarus and Ukraine.  I had not yet met my dearest of friends, had just cracked open my heart to the Russian language, and had little clue of what I wanted to do with my life.  How times have changed.  I am not the same person I was five years ago, and I love it.  The future is still very much a mystery, and I look forward to whatever it brings.  I hope I never become arrogant as to think I have this whole life thing figured out or say "I have arrived." 

One last thing I would like to point out--what the Bible has to say about destination.  Hebrews 11 immediately comes to mind where it lists that famous litany of faith giants.  I looked up part of the chapter in various translations (thank you, Biblegateway.com), and I loved how these people who were so focused on God and endured so much suffering and uncertainty kept themselves focused on their final, heavenly destination no matter what the cost.  They saw themselves as strangers, exiles, aliens, nomads, and foreigners on this earth, knowing that it was not their true home, but putting their trust in what was eternal.  As it said in one translation:

"Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them."

Onward!