The new apartment

I was waiting to blog until this Saturday because we were supposed to sign the lease on that day, but no luck with the lease yet. This was the first time that Carla had seen this apartment. She was really concerned about the lack of cupboards in the kitchen. I had shown her pictures of the apartment but the pictures did not convey the whole story. There is also an issue of the current tenant wanting to stay a few more days, so we have delayed signing the lease until Monday.

Carla is feeling a bit better today about the lack of storage space. We came up with alternative ways of storing dishes and food, and will look for more ways to optimize what we have to work with. The apartment is only 59 m2 (600 squared feet) which is not much, but you don't get much space here in Sydney. You CAN get a larger place, but as usual, the larger the place, the larger the rent. Our apartment is located in Chatswood, NSW, if you are interested to see where it is in relation to Sydney.

I think that the apartment is pretty nice. It is roomy enough, and since there are just the two of us, there should be plenty of space. The apartment has two balconies, which we can use for storage. There is a long swimming pool at the top of the building with a beautiful view of the neighbourhood. The gym room is tiny, but sufficient for what we need. The train station is only three minutes away, and a large grocery store only seven minutes away. There are two huge malls less than 10 minutes walking distance from our place so we are going to enjoy that. Not that we are big shoppers, but there is a Borders store (Chapters-like bookstore) in one of the malls and I can see us spending a lot of time reading magazines there. :-)

We also have Kmart, Target, Aldi (cheap German grocery store), and several electronics stores in the vicinity/mall. Since we are not planning to get a car for the first next while, it is nice to have all these amenities within walking distance.

Carla's school is about 27 minutes by train, and then another 10 minutes by foot. The good thing about taking the train as opposed to the bus is that there is usually enough seating room on the train, and the train ride is a lot smoother. Carla can sit and do all her required reading on the train. Well, maybe not ALL the reading as she has A LOT of reading to do. Carla is pretty much spending all her free time reading, even weekends are reading days. Reminds me of my MBA days. :-)

I am really happy to see Carla enjoying her law program. She is really getting into it, and is totally eager to learn and understand the material. There is an added difficulty because she is not familiar with Australian legal/legislative system, but she is picking up that knowledge very quickly. I am SO PROUD of her! Go Carla!!!