View of Howth from Clontarf.
There are certain things that have gone amazing well and smooth…actually two of the biggest things, obtaining residency, and getting our PPS Numbers, we were able to accomplish in a morning.
Others, like setting up mobile phones (we are both currently on prepay plans), and getting a bank account, took a bit more doing (as I’ve whined before, I still don’t have an account.)
And then there are things like housing…finding a car…(getting jobs I’m guessing might fall into this area), that are just frustrating. Two stories (one you know most of if you’ve been reading along).
First a housing story. There was a 4 bedroom place near the girls school that we were going to see on Sunday night. On Sunday morning I noticed that it had been removed from every rental website. The owner emailed me last night, since I missed this previous Sunday and asked if I’d like to view next week. When I emailed and said we were a bit confused about why it had been listed as let, she wrote back that she had no idea why that happened and she had just reposted it. When I checked on her link, not only had she reposted, she raised the rent by €100.
Secondly a car story. We are looking for an MPV (multiple passenger vehicle…as least that’s what I think it stands for.) Liz found a couple cars online…she called the one dealer asked if the Opel Zafira was still available…he said someone had just test driven it and was thinking about buying it, but we could come & try it. When we got to the lot, after waiting for about 20 minutes for the sales person to get off the phone, he told us, “oh, that car was sold last weekend…but we have a couple other cars that might work.” Needless to say, we are restarting our hunt tomorrow.
It seems that the next item that will fall into the slightly frustrating category is auto insurance. On the one hand, until you get an Ireland driver’s license, you have to pay higher rates…And that guy who hit me a 4 years ago (and told the cop he couldn’t see me because I was going too fast), he’s ensuring that my rates are going to be a bit higher as well.
Before we can get the insurance, we have to have a letter from our old insurance company in NY…(I find myself sighing, just writing this paragraph.)
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Some good news…we hadn’t heard from our letting agent for the place we made an offer on since Friday. I’d emailed some details he’d requested, and Liz had called and gotten his voicemail a couple times. We were starting to think that this place wasn’t going to work out. And while nothing is definite, he did contact us today to say that he’d been off for a few days and will talk to the landlord soon. Please pray that our offer would be accepted.
That’s about it for today…off to go help with dinner.