House Hunters International~ Guatemalan style!

Today, I went house-hunting with my fiancé.  We decided we should be on that TV show, House Hunters International…I mean, we do live in Guatemala and all.  I had to laugh at the conversation I would imagine us having with the show host~ “So, what’s your budget?”  My response would be something like~ “definitely much less than you make in a day.”  As you might imagine, house hunting in Guatemala is not quite the same as house hunting in the States.  I had to laugh at my 3 criteria for our home.  (By the way, I use the term ‘home’ interchangeably with other words like ‘apartment’ and ‘condo’ because they are basically all the same thing here.) 

1.     1. Safe~ by this I mean that I would like to live behind a gate that is guarded by a man with a gun.  I realize that sometimes this is a false sense of security considering other factors, but it just makes me feel better that someone is (usually) always watching my house/complex, they have a weapon, and could possibly deter someone from disturbing me or my family. 

2.     2. Clean~ I realize that this is a relative term.  I’m not talking sparkling, I’m just thinking it would be nice not to have rats, mice, scorpions, or other giant creatures…at least not on a daily basis as a consistent bothersome problem.  My definition of clean has changed since moving to Guatemala.  Your house is as clean as you make it.  You can only get concrete floors so clean before you just give up and call it done.  Even on tiled foors…with the rain, bugs, dirt, dust, volcanic ash, etc. sometimes you just gotta let it go.  I’m working on that…

3.     3. Near my school~ the reason this is in the top 3 is not because I’m lazy or picky.  We will only be having one car, which means Daniel will more than likely be taking me to school in the mornings and picking me up in the evenings before/after he goes to work.  If he is unable to take me or pick me up on certain days, I want to live close enough to where it’s not severely out of someone’s way to take me home or pick me up.

My roommate pointed out that maybe I should include in my list such things as “hot water” and “ability to flush toilet paper.”  Eh, I suppose those could be numbers 4 and 5.  J  I’m not banking on ever being able to flush toilet paper again, so that one isn’t quite as important, and if I don’t have hot water, you better believe I just won’t be showering everyday…especially when the inside temperatures dip into the 40’s at night and early mornings.  Yes, I said INSIDE temperatures.

So, off we headed with ourselves and a cell phone.  That’s all you really need here to search for a house.  You just drive around asking at the garita if there are any houses for sale/rent in that neighborhood.  Sometimes they have no idea but they can usually give you a phone number to call.  Other times, there are signs posted for houses that are for sale or rent.  I’m not kidding when I say that we probably stopped at 20 colonias.  I got so tired of hearing them say, “Fijase que no hay…” Blah, blah, BLAH, BLAH!  I even got out of the car with him each time and went with him just up to the gate so they could see that he was with a gringa.  Usually I don’t pull that card…usually it’s best not to pull that card, but someone advised me that it might get better results since people like to rent/sell to gringos.  It didn’t work for me.  Things like that usually don’t.

We tried to have fun on our house hunting adventure by stopping at colonias that were CLEARLY out of our price range.  We would walk up like we were Mr. and Mrs. Joe Cool and ask, then run back to the car laughing when they told us the price.  My favorite quote of the day is when Daniel said, “Yeah, I have an idea.   If we have 10 children and sell them for $100,000/each, then we could afford to live here.”  When we stopped at one of the colonias, we couldn’t find the guard.  So, we rang each of the buzzers for each of the 10 houses outside the gate on the little keypad thingy to see if anyone knew if anything was available.  We kept pressing the buttons and no one answered until the end and by that time we were laughing so hard because we both just kept pushing random buttons that the lady just hung up on us.   “Hola, buenas tardes…hola?  Hola?”  J  We were both a bit frustrated and tired by the end, so we were just trying to lighten the mood.

If you had been riding in the car with us, you might have gotten sick from the stopping and starting so much, as well as common phrases like, “Ooh!  Stop here, these look cheap!”  or “Oh, these don’t look nice at all.  They would be perfect for us!”  By 5:00 Daniel said, “That’s it.  No more today.”  I heartily agreed.  We were able to find some that are in our price range (our price range starts with a 0, haha!), but there is nothing available right now.  Pray with us, please for something to open up in the next few months!

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where I live.  I really don’t care.  As long as I’m with the one I love, I truly don’t care if that’s on a dirt floor washing my clothes down by the river or in a palace with the finest clothes.   Hot water, no hot water, tarantulas, snakes (hey, we’re all family, right?  J), no a/c, no heat, etc. 

No me importa.  

Just so long as I see this everyday…