The Hunt Commences

The hunt for a apartment (piso) began. Miriam and I decided to join forces for this battle. We copied numbers down from "Se Aquila" signs throughout Huelva, snatched slips from advertisement posters on doors and lampposts and messaged people advertising pisos on apartment-renting sites online. We went on piso visits and once again, THANK THE LAWD I had Miriam there to communicate with the Spaniard landlords. Miriam is completely fluent; she majored in Spanish, studied abroad in Argentina, and did a similar teaching program to ours in Chile this past year. At one of these visits we met Illaria. Illaria is a super friendly Italian who is also in the program. She was visiting the same apartment as us one day. We got along immediately and exchanged contact information and considered moving into an apartment together if we found one available for three. And that we did.
Alas, as fate would have it, after a week of tiring ourselves traversing this unfamiliar city looking at apartments we were not too excited about, we settled on an apartment directly below Jess and Jane's in the same building, with almost the same layout exactly: C/ Marina 29, 9A - Huelva, Spain 21001 (if anyone wants to send me cookies feel free). The piso is in the center of town and has a nice balcony that looks out onto the sunset and Rio Tinto. There was a slight catch to finally locking down this apartment, however: it did not have electricity, internet nor hot water when we first moved in. Jacabo, our initially charismatic landlord but whom we will learn to scorn, predicted we would have these things up and running in three days. Little did we know at first, but this was a Spanish three days, which in actuality turns out to be more than two weeks! We spent the first two weeks in our cool new apartment using candles for light after sundown and still relying on Jess and Jane for hot showers and a place to charge our phones. Not an ideal start. Although we still have candlelight dinners sometimes when feeling nostalgic for old-times sake.