Mi casa su casa

Finally we are settled into our home. We started off in a perfectly nice house across the street from this one. Then we saw the chance to get a larger yard and moved on it. Actually we convinced our new group of suckers (uh ... we mean friends) to help us move. It is great what friends will do for a little pizza and beer.

We are living in Zone 15 of Guatemala City which is very residential and considered very safe. We are off of Boulevard San Lazaro in a gated community of about 15 houses. It has 24 hour security. Unfortunately, some of the borders of the community include barbed wire, the ubiquitous Guatemalan security measure.

So our new pad must be 3 time the size of our Chicago appartment! We have three bedrooms and three baths. There are upstairs and downstairs living rooms. There is also maid's quarters which we don't use because our nanny is not live-in. The house is set on a hill, so we enter into the upstairs. We go downstairs to get to the bedrooms and the yard. We also have our own moat around the house to help with drainage. It works great, but we have to feed the trolls as we cross from the carport.

Our new backyard is the main attraction. The community gardener has been maintaining it for years, so there are already many plants and a couple of small trees. It has a swingset for Shalom also. The back gate opens onto an even larger community park, with more room to play and more swingsets. With such awesome weather year round, we are lucky to have so much outside space. To do: get patio furniture, a hammock, badmiton set, and more Gallo (Guatemalan beer!) We love our new home ... and are getting quite used to this.