Going on 5 months of host family living…

Our goal the last month and a half here in Danlí has been to find a house. I’ve been keeping a list of how many people we’ve asked, contacts we’ve made, and potential rentals we’ve heard about but so far nothing has worked out. We were about to get an apartment a week ago last Monday but the owner tried to raise the price on us last minute. We told him we’d talk to Peace Corps and get back to him. It’s been a week now and we’ve tried to call him several times to no avail. Apparently he doesn’t want to rent it at the price we’ve offered.

Renting in Honduras isn’t renting like in the States. There isn’t a section in the newspaper with rental listings and no websites to check. You basically have to walk around asking people if they know of a house in the area that is for rent and follow leads. We’ve gotten a lot of ¨so-and-so is a good person to ask¨or “in such-and-such neighborhood I heard there was a house for rent” then we go and either the house has been rented or there wasn’t a house to begin with. The other main difference in renting here is there really are no rental standards. Contracts are made and signed only occasionally. Getting information from the landlord about things like trash pick-up, electric and water bills, what happens if you need something fixed, etc. is difficult. You either take the place or you don’t. Why would you need to investigate everything thoroughly before moving in??

Anyway, if you can’t tell already, house hunting has been really frustrating (especially after the lastest miss last Saturday). The woman who runs the internet place we go to has been really nice to Luke and I and has been asking around trying to help us find a house. When we went last Friday night, she told us that she’d heard that a house in a nice barrio was for rent and gave us directions. Saturday morning we went to the neighborhood, asked around to find where the landlord lives and come to find out, the house had been rented the previous afternoon. The owner proceeded to tell us that it was too bad because the house is super pretty with a nice yard, etc. and a very reasonable price for a house (cheaper than the apartment we almost rented). Who knows, maybe something will come up and we’ll be happy we waited for it (at least that’s what I’m going to continue telling myself). Until then...host family living it is!