After another disappointing apartment loss, we found a third temporary apartment for January and February! I’m going to go ahead and post it here in hopes that if it’s going to fall through, it’ll fall through quickly.  I guess the good thing is that I’m not as in love with this one as I was with the other two. Eric made a good point: If we had started off in a place that we absolutely loved, we would be setting ourselves up for disappointment when we move to the more permanent place in mid-February. He’s right.

Plus, this place really is pretty great. Two bedrooms, two baths! We don’t need all that room, but that just happened to be the place that worked out best for us, in terms of price and availability. I have nothing to complain about. i think my lack of excitement now comes from three different places. 1) We’ve been burned a few times, so I don’t want to get too emotionally invested again. 2) The photos are not quite as bright and professional looking as they were for the other two places. Again, probably a good thing because my expectations will be more reasonable. 3) I’m just plain getting nervous about going. Like, really nervous. But that’s a whole other post, and I’m not sure I’m ready to share that one.

So, where is this new place? That’s one of the great things! It’s closer to the water, closer to where I’ll be working, closer to a grocery store, and closer to metro. Here’s another map. I’m getting more tech savvy…slowly…and we’re at the point of me being able to do a screen shot of a google map and draw really fancy circles on it.

Red circle – Lost apartment
Blue circle – New Bella Vista apartment
Black circle – UN Office

The red circle is where we were originally planning to stay, in a neighborhood called El Cangrejo (“The Crab”). It’s near where we stayed when we visited last January.

The blue circle is the location of the new apartment, in a neighborhood called Bella Vista (“Beautiful View”). Better name than “The Crab,” right?

The black circle is the location of the UN Office where I’ll be working. It’s about a 6.1 km from the apartment, which Google Maps adorably tells me will take 11 minutes for me to drive. In Panama traffic, I’m guessing there’s no way it’ll be less than 45 min. We’ll see.

And now, some photos of the apartment.