Arrival

I got here on Wednesday to a very dirty apartment, and a whole room filled with other people's stuff. That was great. Thank goodness for my family! We headed to the store and bought cleaning supplies, got some food and set to work. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a before picture, but basically the kitchen was covered in an orange layer of grease, and the cupboards were pretty viscous to the touch...blech. That night though and the next day we managed to cut away at it, and remove the slimy touch from most of the kitchen and my bathroom upstairs. We vacuumed the carpet with a vacuum already there that we thought to be good, but when using the vacuum the Gifford's brought the next day, we pulled up just as much if not more dust. At that point though, the apartment started to look more livable, and after a shampoo, the carpets are much better i.e. I feel ok about walking on them without shoes. The cleaning process basically went for 3.5 days overall, and technically hasn't stopped, however we did hit the point where it is livable.

My room is quite spacious as you can see, and now that the kitchen has been christened with chocolate chip cookies and has some groceries and clean cookware, I feel much more comfortable. At this point we even have internet access, after a snafu that Comcast was able to solve this morning. So far we are very happy with the service that they have given us. Since the Giffords left on Friday after lunch we have just been hanging out at home (it rained this morning), but I plan on going on a bike ride tomorrow (they have nice paths here). We watched a movie and found a great shopping place at Wegmans (even though I accidentally bought organic milk for $5.99...won't do that again) last night, and I showed Nate the wonders of a rice cooker and can of soup combo. We have a better grasp of the locale after doing some driving around, which is nice, because getting lost is dumb.

I guess now we wait until Wednesday orientation and the arrival of Alex from Ingelheim. I'll try to answer any questions that are posted in the comments in my next post.