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Life in Cuenca

When I was in law school, a professor exhorting us to keep our written arguments short and concise, told us the story of a famous man who started a letter like this: “I’m sorry to send you such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

That’s me and the story of the house search. Events overtook my ability to keep doing numerous short posts relating the wondrous twists and turns in my life over the last two months. With this post, I sat down intending to do only the highlights. Consider the length of this post and then think about the minor stories and embellishments I left out to get it down to even this length!

The morning after the debacle in the notary’s office, I spent some time thinking about whether I wanted to proceed. I still loved my apartment, and staying here when my lease comes up for renewal in June was still an option. However, all the reasons that prompted me to look for a house were still valid, although I was still determined to move only if I found a property I liked as well or better than this apartment. What with one thing and another, I had seen a lot of properties over the previous two and a half years. With the exception of the house John and I lived in, I hadn’t seen anything – house or apartment – I liked as well as this house. Each of them usually had only some of the features I wanted. This house has almost all of them.

When we broke off the house hunt story last time, my offer of $750 per month had been accepted, with the provision that I would pay the water and electricity charges. They wanted me to deposit $750 to their bank account to hold the house until we could sign a lease. There was a brief discussion about the lease start date. I wanted June 1st, they insisted on May 15th. I gave in, as I had gotten a rental price lower than I had expected.

They also wanted the equivalent of two months rent as a deposit. I objected to this. They said it was because of the cats. It was an unfurnished house, I countered. What were the cats going to damage?