We've Rented a House!

We found a great 3 bedroom, 2 bath house in a nice area up on a hill near downtown Heredia. From upstairs we can see all the way across the valley to the hills on the other side. The view at night with the lights is awesome. Upstairs we have a big master bedroom with vaulted ceiling and a window seat. There are also 2 small bedrooms with windows overlooking the coffee fields and the valley below. All of the upstairs floors are wood, except for the bathroom, which is tiled and has a suicide shower. Downstairs there is a long narrow living / dining room, a kitchen, and another bathroom. At the back there are French doors from both the living room and the kitchen out onto a beautiful small tiled courtyard with high vine covered walls. Off the courtyard there is a "pila" (laundry room) and a storage room. From the front of the house, you enter directly from the sidewalk (no front yard) to an extra large double garage. The garage has big double metal car doors plus the pedestrian door, so it's totally closed in from the street. But there's a break in the high roof toward the front and one side so that lots of light gets in. The garage ceiling is wood and the floor is ceramic tile. There's a pretty tropical garden area on one side. Of course we don't have a car and it's very nice out there, so Gene is going to set up his studio out there. It's much more house than we had planned to rent, but it was so fantastic compared to the other few places we'd seen in the same price range that we grabbed it. We're paying $425 per month, unfurnished. Actually we weren’t even thinking about looking at houses for probably another 6 months, but Emma and Jon invited us to go look with them and the rest just sort of happened! The landlady had 2 houses for rent and Emma and Jon have rented the other one. So we already had friends for neighbors before we even moved in. We've spent a lot of time together, out looking for the things we need to live here and just visiting. They are very friendly.