Hills, Hills, Hills!

We have a home! We are the proud renters of a 40 meter-squared apartamento outside city limits en el campo. While most would think the location is in the middle of nowhere, it is approximately a half-mile walk to Jeanna’s school and just under a mile to Eli’s school. Thankfully, the walk in the morning is downhill.
Jaen has more to offer than we were originally expecting, and everything seems to be within walking distance. This may or may not be a good thing as we spent our first two days here walking over 20 miles combined while looking for an apartment. Eli asked for a city with hills, and HILLS WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN! The majority of the streets have an average grade of 3-6%, but it is not unusual to find those with 15% or greater (which by the way, Eli thought would be “fun” to run yesterday…we choose a flatter course today). To put things into perspective, Meacham has an average 6% grade. On the bright side of things, we should come back to Oregon with calves of steel.
The people here are VERY nice. Although it is a town of 115,000 people, it feels much smaller. We both feel very safe and comfortable. Grocery shopping without a car has been exciting for us. We essentially live at the top of the hill and the grocery store conveniently sits at the bottom. The walk is just under a mile, but is literally straight up hill. For the La Grandees- taking groceries home is much like hiking to the “L”. As a side note: Hiking packs make for great grocery-getters. In all honesty, we are very happy with the location of our apartment. It more than meets our needs and is much bigger than our first. Our only complaint is that our apartment is not furnished with an oven. No baking for eight months might limit meal options; we have already mourned the loss of our lasagna and turkey enchiladas.
We’re both quite pleased with our school assignments and after only one week have repeatedly been stopped on the street with the greetings of children saying, “Hello, teacher”. The teachers here have an incredibly rough, back-breaking schedule of 9:00-2:00. Thank God that siesta is from 2:00-5:00 or they might not make it through the week. It’s a good thing that because of Feria of San Lucas they only have a 3-day work week coming up or undoubtedly we’d be seeing early retirement. We’ll save Feria and tapas for another day.