Jesse and I arrived in Northridge, California (which is where my school is) on August 20th. With no where to go we toured the city for a bit. We then contacted our Mennonite-your-way contact and got directions to her house. She lives about 15 minutes from Northridge and it turns out that she's originally from Elmira, Ontario, which is pretty weird. Jesse's mom even looked her up in her yearbook and found her. Small world.
It was a little strange just showing up at someone's house but she was really nice and welcomed us in. She even gave us the master bedroom to sleep in which I felt guilty about, however having a nice bed to sleep in for a change was great.
On Monday, August 21st, we started our apartment search. It was a lot harder than we expected. We drove around looking for places and numbers but when we called them either no one picked up, the place wasn't available for a month or the price was way to much. So we ended up with nothing on our first day and spent another night at Barbara's (MYW lady).
Tuesday was similar, although this time we walked around to a lot of places and saw a few apartments. It was so hot walking around though that whenever I saw a sprinkler system I just walked right through it. My clothes stayed wet for about 5 seconds and then they were dry again. We did find a place that we liked, which was available at the end of the week and within our price range. I should add that our "price range" sort of increased once we found out what sort of price apartments go for over here. We decided to sleep on it and come back if we still wanted it. Therefore, another night at Barabara's.
On Wednesday I had an International Student group advising meeting at school. Before I went though Jesse and I applied for the apartment that we saw the day before. Barbara's husband and daughter were returning that day so we needed to find somewhere else to stay. We contacted another MYW person and she gladly took us in. Her name was Lisa and she lives in Pasadena, which is about half an hour east of Northridge. On our first night, Lisa wasn't even home. She just gave us a key and her house. It was pretty amazing.
On Thursday we drove to Ventura to go to the beach. The water was pretty cold and it was sort of cloudy so we just layed on the sand reading. We then drove to Oxnard in search of a John Deere dealership however we couldn't find it. Probably because Jesse only knew that there was one in Oxnard but he didn't know what street or what part of town. So we just drove back to Pasadena. By this time we had been living out of a suitcase for over a week and a half. It was starting to get annoying.
We spent most of Friday walking around Pasadena. For lunch we went to the cafeteria of the university that Lisa works at. She gave us some free meal tickets. The food was amazing. Probably the best we had all trip. That night we invited Lisa to play a game of Dutch Blitz with us. This lead to some interesting conversation. Although she's not Mennonite, Lisa is sort of an amish fanatic. She's really interested in the culture which shows by the books about the Amish all over her house. She asked us a lot of questions about our background. This lead to a discussion of pacifism and George Bush. Lisa was playing the devil's advocate which got me a little fired up because I'm easily sucked into an argument. It was all in good fun although it did make for some interesting rounds of dutch blitz.
Saturday was spent driving around Northridge trying to get stuff ready for when we move in. It was an uneventful day.
We went to church with Lisa sunday morning. It was interesting, a little long, but everyone was very friendly and wanted to talk with the new people. We ate lunch with Lisa and some students from her school. They were in the INSIGHT program which I do not remember what it stands for. Something about indepth study something, something, history and theology or something. The food was good. That afternoon we drove back to Northridge and moved into our new apartment. With no furniture and our airmattress in storage in Barbara's garage for the moment, we slept on the floor of the living room. Not very comfortable but at least we had a home.
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