I love coincidences! I'm always on the look out for them, and when I see one it makes me ponder. I believe that God has a plan for each of our lives, and if at each oportunity we accept his plan rather than our own, it leads to far better things than we could ever have gained through our own plans. So when I see a coincidence, I believe God has put it there as a kind of signpost to say, "look over here! come this way!"

We've been trying to find a house in Austin on and off for a few months, but people told us there's no point looking much earlier than a week before we arrive. So we started again on Monday last week and found a few places that seemed to fit our criteria:
- 3 bedrooms (2 plus a study)
- maximum $900/month
- within cycling distance of Sid's campus (6 miles)
- not in an area with car theft problems

One of Sid's coursemates had offered to look at places for us and give us a report, take photos, etc. So we tried to set up viewings with our top 3. But one of them wanted long term renters, one realtor was on holiday and the owner never got back to us, one sent us a long credit history form and again we never heard back. So we went back to the drawing board and found one on Craigslist which had just been dropped to $900 a few hours earlier. We sent the info over to Liz and she viewed it on Thursday.

And it goes beyond all of our criteria :) It's several hundred square feet bigger than any of the houses I've been looking at, it looks really lovely (which at some point in my searching I'd given up on finding!), it's in a quiet cul-de-sac, with a very proactive landlord AND it's only 2 miles to campus!

But the funniest thing was the first line of Liz's email: "First of all, the neighbor who showed me the house is actually from Zambia. What an odd coincidence!" Living in Chester, you don't just bump into Zambians every day! Generally the only Zambians we've met here have been related to us and staying in our house! So the landlord gave this neighbour's details as a reference and as Sid chatted with him it turns out that not only is he from Zambia, but actually from Chingola, the town Sid is from! (Which means he will quite likely know Sid's mum and dad!)

I love how this has worked out! We'll be signing papers today or tomorrow and hopefully moving straight in when we arrive on Thursday. It's funny how all the other houses we'd seen were dead-ends, and this one seems to have a flashing neon light over it!

Four days to go

Woohooo! Four days till lift-off, and all I can say is God is good!! We got our house decluttered 6 months ago when we were planning to sell it. It didn't sell, but we were saying yesterday how glad we are not to be decluttering now! Sid and I both have tendencies towards last-minuteness, and I can just picture how these last days would have been if we hadn't decluttered back in January!!

We found some friends to rent our house from us - who want it furnished, so we can basically just walk out leaving all our furniture here.

We've been looking for somewhere to live, and have found a 3 bedroom house, in our budget, 2 miles from campus. One of Sid's coursemates went to see it and it looks great. So we're just getting that finalised.

Oh, and money! Somehow we have the $50,000 needed for a year of study! And visas.

We've had endless lists of things to do over the last few months, and God's given us the energy and motivation to do everything.

So now it's just packing and tying up loose ends. Over the last 6 years we've travelled quite a bit together, certainly enough to know that leaving it to the last minute is not a pleasant experience for either of us! So we decided not to be stressed this time round. Wednesday lunch is our cut off point after which there will be no packing, no to do lists, no last minute anything. We will be spending Wednesday afternoon and evening enjoying our last hours in Chester! Hurray :)