Yayyyy!

The trip was a success! A wonderful lovely success! We had an easy flight out there, leaving SF around 9:30 and taking BART to the airport, which caused us some delays, but we are up for running across terminals. We munched on a baguet of sourdough bread and chedder cheese for dinner and sipped tiny bottles of red wine we brought which made falling asleep a whole lot easier. Transfered at Chicago and arrived in Raleigh around 10am. Picked up our rental car (my first rental!) and immediately went to Chapel Hill, about a 30 minute drive. We were both sitting there thinking.. what in the world are we doing here? This is SO different! And the restroom at the rental car agency had a painting of the Golden Gate Bridge.. which was hard on me.

But then we pulled into downtown Carrboro, the adjacent town, right during their Sunday morning goings-on. And it made everything okay. It was exactly like Davis! An Irish band was playing, there were tons of children and dogs running around on the lawn and everyone was eating yummy food from the very Nugget-esque grocery store. I was starved and had a wonderful salad and Trent had a bagel. We didn't have many appointments Sunday, but drove around and got the feel for the area. A lot more places were available than seemed on the internet, and we called a lot of signs posted in front of houses. We looked at a couple but they weren't for us, sharing a house with a man with kids, and living in big apartment complexes on the outskirts of town.

Finally we were simply exhausted and headed back to Raleigh. We stayed with Trent's future co-worker Heather, and her sister Jenny. They weren't home yet, but left a key under the mat. We let ourselves in, said hello to their three cats, and fell dead asleep on their sofas. Luckily Trent woke me when they got home and we sat around and chatted the rest of the evening. Her sister had lots of questions about biology which was fun for me to be all nerdy, and Trent and Heather talked work. They filled an air mattress for us in a vacant bedroom and we crashed. The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast with them before heading off. We had several more appointments scheduled and saw some very respectable places that would be decent. But we had found one yellow house that I was totally smitten with, but had no luck in contacting the landlords. We met with Penny's agent Sharon who showed us a nice place that was tied for our second place option.

Most places were looking to rent earlier than we were interested and we thought we would have to settle for paying for a month or so that we weren't there. We had lunch at a cute restaurant called Carrburrito, which to my delight had quite respectable burritos! All is not lost! We had our last meeting at 7 or so with an adorable place that was a bit out of our price range. Then while driving home, Trent discovered an adorable neighborhood just east of campus. All the houses were huge and amazing, big porches and very forest like. He found a "fixer-upper" that we actually called about, but it turns out it was being demolished due to being unliveable. Then, just was we were about to head back to Raleigh, we spot a sign saying "Cottage for Rent." We immediately pull into the drive and I whip out my cell phone. A man named Bob with a thick Southern accent answers. There are 4 cottages in a row, all different colors. One is left for rent. Which just happens to be the appropriate size, the perfect price, and availble August 1st! I nearly yell for joy. But he can't show it until tomorrow.. he thinks. I guess I sounded desperate enough that he gave in and showed up 10 minutes later.

Unfortunately, the people were still living in the cottage.. but they were nice enough to let us invade their home and take a peek. It is pretty small (bigger than what we have now, but just one bedroom). It has a livingroom with a fireplace and built in bookshelves, a dining room with built in bookshelves, a bedroom with three reasonable closets, a small but big enough bathroom, a laundry room with washer and dryer included and a narrow but well designed kitchen with a big stainless steel sink. There is a big porch out front for bbq-ing and it is very heavily forested. The cottage arrangements makes it feel like summer camp! It was amazing. I immediately fell in love. When we were looking earlier, I kept stressing wanting more space, two bedrooms or such, but I just knew this was the perfect place for Trent and I. Cozy, warm, with tons of character, it was perfect.

The cottages were originally built in the 1940's for the GI bill, for soldiers to go to UNC. His wife's family bought all of them a while back and began renting all of them, except the red one, which his mother in law occupied. She added the living room and laundry room so it is the largest and best well kept of them all. And it is ours!! This fall! We definitely saw bigger places, but the charm, combined with the insane closeness to campus and the ease of Trent's commute made it the winner. And, this sounds totally cheesy, but it seemed like a place where the Carters would live. Something about it. We signed the lease right there on the tailgate of his truck after talking a bit about ourselves and getting to know each other. He seems like a very nice fella. Hoooray! We drove back to Raleigh afterwards and shared the good news. We went to dinner at a pub in downtown Raleigh with Heather and played Pub Quiz (much easier out here, our group of three came in second place!).

Tuesday we slept in a bit before cleaning the place up a bit and then going to Jordan Lake, about 8 miles south of Chapel Hill. Beautiful hike out to the lake with tons of frogs hopping around and several nice people along the way. The lake is huge and very unoccupied, and there are supposedly bald eagles nesting in the forests around it. We didn't see any, natch. We scoped out the shopping around Chapel Hill (there is a Cost Plus and Linens and Things not too far away.. good to know) and then dropped off the car and flew to Chicago. There we were delayed for a couple hours, a big lightening storm hit right when we boarded. We got to SFO at 11:40 and madly dashed to the Bart station to catch the last inbound train. Easy transfer to a bus and we were home. And fast asleep!

So, it feels great to have that done with. I was initally concerned that I had let my overwhelming attraction to the place come before logical thought, but Trent assured me that no bikes will be in the kitchen like they are now and it will be perfect. I feel a whole lot better about this move now. I really like Chapel Hill. The campus is beautiful, everyone was SO friendly, and I didn't really mind the heat. I felt like Dad when he blasts the furnace and then says.. finally, I am comfortable! It will definitely be a change of pace, there were some "southern" things we will have to get used to, especially that sweet ice tea.. I just can't do it! But I think it will be a great experience for us to try something totally new and different.

So come on down and visit us at our Park Place cottage!!