Of friends who’ve been family

We landed in San Francisco on a cold, cold morning. We were going to be staying with a friend until we found an apartment of our own. As our shuttle drove us from the airport to the said friend’s house, I tried taking in the familiar sights. This was going to be home for some time now. How long, I wasn’t sure. I might as well warm up to this place as soon as I can, I told myself. But that freezing morning made it exceptionally hard to ‘warm up’ to it.

Let me tell you how apprehensive I had been by the idea of staying with a friend. She is a close friend of Mint and had generously offered to host us till we found a home. But my mind panicked by the thought. Would it be too intrusive? Would we be invading their space too much with all our luggage? Would they feel obliged to cook for us? I certainly didn’t want to eat all our meals at their place. I kept telling Mint we would insist on eating out.

The stay at the friend’s house turned to be delightful and I can’t be more grateful to them for opening up their home to us. Of course, I still didn’t want to overstay our welcome, so I would keep insisting to Mint to pick an apartment soon. But if you know him, you will know how difficult a task it is to make him choose.

We needed the apartment to be close to a BART station, since Mint works in the city. I wanted to make sure the apartment had a washer and dryer, plenty of natural light and central heating. And of course, we had a budget to adhere to. Given all our requirements and conditions, finding the right apartment wasn’t an easy task. Every evening we would spend hours visiting different apartment complexes and leasing offices.

Before I talk about our home, let me talk about our other friend who helped us by lending us her car. She was vacationing in India for a month and without a second thought, told us we could use her car in her absence. We knew it would take us a while to buy our own car, so having one handy as soon as we landed was nothing short of a blessing. Had she not lent us a car, we would have gone ahead and rented one on weekends and our search for an apartment would have been that much slower. Did I already mention I feel grateful for having such friends?

After almost 2 weeks of searching (both extensively and intensively), we finally zeroed in on an apartment. Now we had to go through the pains of finding appropriate furniture to buy. Most apartments in the US do not even come with light fixtures, so we needed to buy a ton of things before we could move in.

On hearing that we had found an apartment, another friend of Mint told us we could have ALL his furniture. He was moving to the city, to an apartment that was much smaller than his current 3 bedroom home. He didn’t know what to do with all the furniture he had. He didn’t care enough to sell it, even though that would have gotten him a good chunk of money.

We offered several times to pay for it, but he was adamant and said he only wanted to give it to us, not sell it to us. And just like that, we were all set to move in. He gave us his couch (all seats are recliners, we love how comfortable they are), the center table, a futon, a king sized bed, a side table for the bed and a 4 seater dining table.

We only had to pay the movers and managed to bring in all furniture in under $500 (And that too only because the pick up place was an hour away from us and because all the furniture had to be hauled up to our 3rd floor apartment). Once we had the furniture in place, we went on to personalize the house by adding bits and pieces to it. Here is a sneak peak. This is one side of our living room.

Mint usually doesn’t like the idea of a table runner on the center table, but there were a few faint stains on it that we wanted to camouflage, so the runner was put. We’re still in the process of doing up our house, making changes and adding some personality to it. Once I think it is close to complete, I can probably put up some more pics.

The point of this post was to remark on our wonderful friendships. Right from offering us a home for our initial stay, to lending us a car, to generously gifting us with furniture, they’ve done it all. We can’t be more thankful.