A Fond(ish) Farewell to Our First Flat

[NOTE: I am calling this place a flat for the sake of alliteration, not because I’ve already switched over to Britishisms!]

It was hugely beneficial to my peace of mind as we prepared to move here that UCT offers temporary housing for its staff, and that Collin had already secured one of these apartments for us and was even able to see it when he visited Cape Town in February. He assured me it was nice enough and we’d be comfortable here.

It was nice enough. And we were comfortable here. But I’m really excited that we’re moving into our new place tomorrow.

There are probably things we’ll end up missing about this place. Collin will probably miss being able to walk to work, which is what he’s done for the past five years in Pittsburgh. I’ll miss having free access to machine dryers every time I put on a crunchy pair of line-dried blue jeans. I suspect we’ll both miss the floor space most of all, because this place is bizarrely gigantic for a university-owned apartment, even one meant for staff housing. Far too big for our modest “we moved here in suitcases” belongings, but far too big is probably¹ preferable to even a little too small, and our new digs are… what is it they say in newspaper listings? “Cozy.”

But I know I won’t miss The Least Comfortable Couch Ever Devised By God or Man.

I won’t miss playing 21st century tetris by trying to figure out how to maximize our grand total of six electrical outlets without having to resort to reading by candlelight.

I won’t miss our bizarre hot plate temperature “control.”

I won’t miss 4AM attempts to MacGyvress a way to keep the door to our balcony closed with a fabric belt from one of my dresses and a heavy chair because I can’t figure out how to make the Old Timey Key That I Thought Only Existed In the Movies work.

But I will remember this place fondly, as the first place I ever called “home” outside of the US. I’ll remember goofy nights drinking too much cheap wine, dancing on the slippery hardwood floors, watching so much television we actually got bored with it and had to resort to old-timey ways of entertaining ourselves like JUGGLING (or in my case, dropping apples onto the slippery hardwood floors) and READING BOOKS.

Our time here was a time of modest but pleasant living. Nothing worth serious complain, but the simplicity of this place will make the relative fanciness of our new apartment feel all the more luxe. Stay tuned for very braggy photos of our new digs!

¹ I originally wrote “undoubtedly preferable,” but then I remembered that Child Robin wrote a song about how her house was too big and her cousin’s house was “the perfect size, but mine is not.”