Loja Apartment

I have not shown your our apartment yet. We love living here and Lewis tells people that if we could move all of our family here he would like to stay. You would all like it here as well, but only if you could speak Spanish. It it hard to fit in when you cannot communicate.

Loja has addresses. They don't have mail delivery but the streets have names and the houses have numbers. So much easier to keep the records of the members of the church when addresses exist. We live on 18th of November Street and this is our house number. But if you come to visit you will have to call us to come down and open the door. There is no doorbell. We have to open the door with a key to get out as well as to get in.

 

We are on the third floor. In Spanish speaking countries the first floor is Planta Baja and you begin counting after that. Here we are on the second floor but there are three sets of stairs to get there.

On the left is Maria Luisa, our landlady. I really like her and she has been very kind and helpful. The other woman works at a real estate office. We paid her $50 to find us apartments for rent that fit our requirements. She was much more efficient than we were in locating apartments that were available for rent. We appreciated her help.

This is where we are living:

 We do have two bedrooms.

 

 

 

 

One unusual feature is that only the bedrooms have a "real ceiling". The living room and kitchen and bathroom are open to the roof of the building. Maria Luisa and her family of two daughters used to live in the whole house. She has been divorced and has divided the house into three apartments. The area outside of our kitchen and living room has a washing machine for Maria Luisa and one for us. There are also clotheslines that we both use. It is nice to be able to dry our clothes outside the apartment but under the roof. Also it is not humid here. Clothes dry quite quickly since they are not being rained on.

 

 

The toilet and shower are beyond the bathroom sink. We have hot water that works great. That is important because it is often cold here, in my opinion. Lewis says it is never cold. But he does wear a jacket inside our apartment at times and is happy for hot water in the shower.

We usually play dominoes while we eat. The loser has to do the dishes. It works for us. I didn't find a photo that shows our computers. We have two card table sized tables that we pushed together in the living room for our two laptops. We are often in front of them. We wish you could all come and visit. We would take you for a walk along the river just across the street.