Nos Hemos Mudado!

Simply, Amy and I have moved.
Yes, after 17 months of living together in our little 'cottage' in the middle of a bumpy dirt road, we finally let our new friend (and SI staff member) Katie convince us that we 3 should live together and find a bigger house to let that happen. While I was in the states over Christmas, Katie looked at a house here that she thought would be perfect, but too expensive. When Amy and I got back here in January, we went to look at it, fell in love and begged the owners (Dominicanyorks-- Dominicans who live in New York) to lower the price. They refused. We were bummed. The next day they called and said they'd lower the price. We were ecstatic. The next hurdle to get through was finding people to take over the lease on Amy's and my house and keep our two brutish Dobermans. Thankfully, Josh and Vicki (who are about to join our staff) agreed to take over the lease and keep our doggies. God works all things together for the good.
So, a week ago today we moved into a palace. I'm not joking. This place is HUGE. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a dining room, kitchen, living room and a separate room just off of my room where we keep the treadmill, yoga mats and exercise balls. We have a wide balcony that goes almost all the way around. We rent the upstairs and the downstairs in inhabited by the groundskeeper, Ysidro.
At first, I felt odd moving into such a rich looking place. I mean, we're missionaries. My monthly budget didn't increase though because, even though I pay a little more for rent, we now share the cost of paying for the cleaning lady (which I was paying by myself at the old place, while Amy payed for the lawn guy, who we no longer need since new house comes with a lawn guy), and we share the utilities 3 ways instead of 2. However, just because our house looks extravagent, doesn't mean we don't still have the same issues. Our kitchen sink has been completely stopped up, our toilets don't flush well and half this week we were without water because... I don't even want to go into it. Not to mention it took the phone company a week to come out and hook up our service-- still waiting for the internet to get hooked up. Thankfully, we live near our staff pastor's family, so we went over there in the mornings to shower and use the bathroom and we used rain water to wash our dishes outside. We may live in a palatial estate, but we still live like Dominicans!!
Here are some photos of the new place, our new roomie and Amy washing dishes in our outdoor sink, using rain water! P.S. my ankle is mostly better, but my foot is still having issues. I'm hobbling around wearing an ace bandage, but at least it's without crutches!