In the life of a Foreign Service Spouse, there are certain involuntary breath-holding moments that occur in response to the ambiguity of this lifestyle. One of those moments is the day you get a post assignment. The other is the day you get your housing assignment. As you might expect, both have a pretty major impact on what your life is going to look like over the next 2-3 years and most of the time you’ve had very little influence over the decision.
To give you an idea of how it works, important information usually arrives via Nick’s work email. We try to open to open the life-changing emails together, holding hands and taking a deep breath before we find out what we’ve been given. Now don’t get me wrong, the State Department treats us beautifully, but I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to the lack of choice that exists in our lifestyle.
Since we’re less than 90 days out, we knew our housing assignment would be coming soon. We were allowed to give preferences and some of the things we indicated were that we’d like to be near the ocean and be around restaurants. We were okay with living in a condo again and Nick didn’t mind a longer commute. We figured this would be the last time we could do a ‘city experience’ before we had to move to the burbs with our growing family.
Based on all the people we talked to, we fully expected to be assigned to a condo in Miraflores. Not only did we not end up in Miraflores, but we got assigned a 3 bedroom house with a backyard! This is practically unheard of for a Junior Officer like Nick, especially with only 3 people in our family.
And now, on to the tour…
The picture above is of our living room, which looks quite spacious. I’m totally digging the hardwood floors, although Nia’s knees may get more banged up than usual when she starts crawling. The living room looks out onto our walled garden/backyard. I am insanely excited to decorate this space and plan to make it an outdoor living room of sorts. Hopefully that’ll encourage us to use it for lots of social gatherings. Given that it’s 60-80 degrees year round and mostly cloudy, I think we’ll get a lot of use out of it. And did I mention how thrilled I am to be able to grill again (no balcony in Manila) ???
The kitchen looks sensational too – way more modern than I was expecting. The center island will also be great to have for entertaining!
The house comes with 3 bedrooms, each of which has it’s own bathroom. Yes, you did the math right, one of those bedrooms will be set aside exclusively for GUESTS! Who wants to visit???
The bathrooms also look quite modern. In addition to the rooms shown, we’ll also have a dining room, office area, foyer and maid’s quarters. We’re not sure if we have a garage or car port yet.
The area of Lima we’ll be living in is called San Isidro. It’s known primarily as the Financial district, but also has a lot of high-end housing. From everything we’ve read, it seems to be a fantastic neighborhood. It’s also just a mile or so from the ocean, so we’ll have easy access to the water. The only golf course and cricket club in Lima are also located here.
I found a video that’ll give you a feel for the area. Lots of green space! If anyone’s familiar with this part of town, please leave us comments and/or links about it.
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