August 7th, 2022
Sunday August 7th actual move in day
OK, so there are a few things I need to update on. Let’s start with the visit to animal mama yesterday afternoon. I really think this is something that would be good for Nichol as honestly I can be a little boring. And I think it would be good for him to be around other dogs every so often. The small dogs are kept separate from the large dogs. The big dogs are outside and the smaller dogs are inside. He did great with all of it even considering that all the other dogs kind of went nuts when he and I walked in. Lots of butts were sniffed and introductions were made. I saw the car that they pick up and drop off in. I think he’ll like that! It also occurred to me on the way back up hotel that he could get picked up at the second option for pick up time which is between eight and 8:15 AM. I have to be at school at 7 AM so the initial pick up time of seven to 7:15 AM would not work, but my students are in their Khmer lesson from 7:45 to 8:45 am so since I’m only a two minute walk from school I can run home grab him and meet the Driver. I think we will start slow, so I’ve booked him to start on Wednesday. I will probably go pick him up early so that his first day is a little shorter. If I get them to drop him off he’ll get dropped off between 5 and 6 PM. They promised they will send me lots of pictures during the day, so I’m looking forward to that.
At 4:30 PM Sinet came and picked me up at the hotel so we could go over to the apartment that I chose, to pay the deposit and the first months rent (and sign a contract). It’s a three month contract so it will end on November 5. I feel bad because the agent is only going to get a small tip instead of an actual commission from the building because of the three month lease thing. But there will be other things that I will use him for as he provides many services for ex-pats. So I will try to help him out there where I can. The $700 per month rent gets me a two bedroom two bathroom fifth floor apartment with a balcony and a washer that is only a couple minute walk from my school! The beds are a little hinky, one room has a queen and the other has two doubles. So obviously this is not ideal once Troy comes but I suspect we will be moving on pretty quickly once he gets here. The fifth floor is actually more like the seventh floor since hear the first floor is actually the ground floor and there is another floor for management. So that adds a couple floors to the number. My apartment is the length of the front of the building on my floor and there are only four apartments on this floor so it’s pretty quiet. My other requirement was an elevator, after spending a week and a half at a hotel with no elevator (and being on the third floor) that was a lot of stairs to carry my furry friend up and down while the bad knee is acting up. Given that that will be an ongoing issue, we are much better off with an elevator. Besides, I will get my fair share of stairs at school as my classroom is on the fourth floor. I’ll be going up and down those stairs multiple times a day!! 💪
As it turns out I don’t get the keys to the apartment today since the landlord needs to sign the contract. So we bring up the bags of stuff that I brought over and I’m just gonna leave them there. It wasn’t my intention to stay the night anyways because there’s things I need to get. I’m told I need to come back tomorrow at 11 AM to pick up my keys. So that is what I will do! I told Sinet he didn’t have to drive me back to the hotel, that I would walk. (It’s about a 24 minute walk). I did stop at the small restaurant close to the hotel and picked up an order of beef fried rice that I had tried a couple nights ago. Very tasty and only $3.50 USD!
So now it is Sunday, and I managed to sleep until almost 6 AM today. That is just perfect as I will need to be up bright and early just like that on school days anyways. I do prefer it to waking up at 3:30 AM however 😉 I was able to catch up with Troy and purchase his ticket to Phnom Penh for October 14. So it feels good having that set and bought and now we can start counting sleeps!!🎉 🎉 🎉
I got all our stuff packed up and hauled downstairs where the extremely loyal Tuktuk Driver (that waited patiently for me to need a Tuktuk again ever since Monday) was ready to drive me over to the apartment. I needed to get a more traditional Tuktuk Driver for this trip since I had a couple extra bags. The bulk of my stuff was moved over yesterday with Sinet in his truck, but a small Grab Tuktuk would have been a little cozy. So I just decided to have Yim take us over. I gave him 10,000 riel (~$2.50) and he was very happy with that! I also did go over to the mall this morning to get a couple towels and some cloths and cleaner and a few things that I will need.
I showed up here exactly at 11 o’clock and the gal at the front desk was waiting for me. She gave me my keys and it was just that simple. It’s actually a card, not a key…..feels very New Age 😉 I came up and it took me exactly 51 minutes to clean everything I wanted to clean and unpack my two little bags. I opened up the windows and the slider and since I have windows on three sides, I get a nice Crossbreeze and some great fresh air. So hopefully I won’t even have to run the air conditioning that much. Electric is going to be the big expense here. It is about twice as much as electricity costs back home. It’s $.25 per kilowatt hour. I expect it will be probably close to $200 a month depending on usage. The only other thing that’s not included in my rent is water, the tapwater and drinking water. Tapwater averages between five and eight dollars a month and the drinking water is a 5000 riel ($1.25) for one of those gigantic water cooler jugs. Seems reasonable enough. I can get them from the lobby downstairs, so it’s extremely convenient.
