A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Here are some pictures of our apartment and the surrounding area.  I had every intention of putting them in a coherent order, but my blog had other plans.  I apologize for the not-perfect arrangement and promise to do better next time.  :)

The view from my bedroom of an elementary school across the street.

Each morning, the school bell (or song) rings from loud speakers around the block.  I no longer hear it in my sleep, but on the first morning I almost had a heart attack.  It's quite loud! 

The shorter building in front is the elementary school, and the taller one is the middle school.  They both share the large field on the left.

Speed limit

Our kitchen is stocked with Pringles and yogurt.  I don't know why we keep leaving the grocery stores empty-handed.  It shouldn't be that confusing.

Living room

The apartment was fully furnished/decorated.  Most everything you see was here when we arrived - except the Macbook, of course.

Now, this was a surprise.  Everything on those shelves with the one exception of my new, brown rain boots was left by the previous tenant.  The apartments are passed from one teacher at our school to the next and what doesn't fit in someone's suitcase becomes a permanent fixture in the apartments.

Along with the storage shelves, the washing machine is located on our enclosed, back balcony.  Sliding glass doors separate the balcony from our living room on one side and the outdoors on the other.  Because we do not have a dryer, the extra space in front of the washer will be set up with a drying rack.

This is part of our apartment complex - most apartment buildings here look exactly like this.

Building 509 - that's us!!  There are 15 floors total - we live on lucky 13...

This is the view from our front door into our living room.  To the right is the kitchen and my bedroom is the first door on the left.  The white door in the top, left corner is Andrea's room, which is next to our bathroom.

My lovely bedroom.  This is taken from the door so you can see a corner of my bed and desk.  The first set of sliding glass doors opens onto my enclosed balcony/walk-in closet.  The second set opens to the outside.  It's very private...

Here's my bed with the leftover art work from the previous tenant.  The mattress is about 1" thick and rock hard.  I have yet to purchase a comforter, but my Maryville blanket is nice and cozy.  Hey Austin people - notice my p.j. pants... Hook 'em :)