OUR NEW HOME

1926 Woodward Avenue -
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

We've been BUSY!
We looked at a ton of homes, found a neighbourhood we really liked and narrowed it down to this one house on the corner of 2 quiet streets, walking distance from shops and buses, and 2.5 miles from school.

It has a basement (aka the man cave) with brick walls for sound proofing and outlets for amps etc

1st floor has hardwood floors (tho house is 89 years old) and nice sized rooms

2nd floor has 2 big bedrooms, one small room and an office space (too small for a bedroom really) 3rd floor (attic) has carpeting and a bathroom (that needs some updating but the plumbing is all there) and that will be Betty's space

So - home inspection tomorrow - move in Aug 4th...

...and now I get to have the weekend off before training starts on Monday!

And what have YOU been doing?

ARE WE THERE YET?

We arrived in Cleveland on Wednesday morning, after about 22 hours of driving, eating and other stops. We drove 1437 miles!

We are now staying at our temporary destination, where we get to enjoy not only the top floor, that we reserved and paid for, but the whole rest of the house which is currently empty. Eliott is sleeping in the "man-cave" i.e. basement, and Betty and I are on the top floor. We have found a grocery store and several coffee shops nearby, as well as a little diner that looks promising.



Today we did a little tour with our realtor, Susanne. We saw several neighbourhoods that would work. Then we went into the school for a little reality check - before I can contemplate purchasing a home I need to feel like we are going to live, work etc... here, which is not quite the case yet. I have no idea how we made it there by car; most of the time I had no clue where we were, so we just haphazardly headed in what we thought was the right direction until we came across something we recognised. It's a weird feeling - I think that several times we went very close to the school but as we couldn't see the school itself, I had no clue.



Our next stop - have you guessed - was a bookstore to get a street map!

Armed with that I felt like we could conquer the world (starting with zip code 44118).

Now we are anticipating going out to dinner with a mother and senior from school; we also met a Mexican family whose daughter Marina (16) is moving here for the High School, and I have 2 contacts from friends in Austin who know people here. We're on the way to making friends!



Please email us and let us know what you think of our blog and what you want to know about next time. I will also try to figure out how to post photos.



We miss you all!

Love,
FranEliBet

D-5: GETTING READY

School is over...
... summer begins!

And we are taking a ROAD TRIP!

Departure time is set for 0800 on Monday June 8th, when we will head out amid cries of "Remember the Alamo!"
Itinerary:
Georgetown: second breakfast
Waco - elevenses
Dallas - lunch
Texarkana - mid-afternoon snack
Little Rock - dinner (by now we're in Arkansas)
Memphis - bedtime snack and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (In Tennessee)

Day 2:
Memphis - breakfast
Nashville - lunch
Louisville - dinner (Kentucky)
Cincinnati - ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ IN OHIO!!!

Day 3:
Cincinnati to Cleveland should take 4 hours or so, but we always take longer because of all those stops...

I have a place to stay in Cleveland close to Shaker Square, the oldest shopping district in THE NATION!
I will give you all those details in a later blog.

Love y'all,
Francoise