Home is where you are now

I've moved to the new apartment since Sept 1st officially, but due to some trips it's only now that I finally start to really have a look at my environment.

We registered to be a resident in our community today.
After 4 years maintaining in all documents that we are still officially the resident of Indonesia, we finally changed our residence status.
Now that we live in a privately owned apartment this status is very much recommended to be had as it gives us the privilege of having lower rates to be paid on water, gas, and electricity bills, and also on urban waste handling fee.
It would also enable us to have the Italian citizen health insurance card as compared to the previous state where we can only have the declaration paper that we are supported by Italian national health insurance system since we were not yet a resident.

And today during this process I finally started to look around to my new neighborhood.

Once we started our day we were greeted by the lady living in front of our apartment(who has a cute black, long-haired cat!). She wore a very stylish hairdo and red-rimmed eyeglasses. She cheerfully asked us how are we doing, and shared that she is in a happy state. She commented on how we have always been inside our apartment. My limited Italian has prevented me from telling her the complete story that we've been away on vacation this month, silly me.
Instead, I told her that we are students that are doomed to be either be in the university or dead sleeping in the apartment :D

Well, in some way my answer is very correct now anyway that we have no internet at home yet, and it's freezing cold inside our apartment. We basically just spend the whole day in the university and only go home late at night for dinner and sleep.

Further on our way to the community center we found that there's a small bakery just outside our apartment complex that opens early at 7 in the morning. If only we knew it beforehand our breakfast this morning wouldn't be so sadly consisting of just the instant soup and crackers and J could have the breakfast with some bread and peanut jam that he craved for this morning.

We found too that there's a local bank branch just few steps from it. Going there surely will beat having to go to the other branch nearby my campus just to pay our bills.

We were helped by gracious locals on our way to find the community center. The bus driver didn't have the clue where is the community center that we were looking for, but a helpful old fellow passenger came to our help and told us the correct bus stop and how to reach the piazza. Further, when (still) we couldn't find the piazza, an old man eagerly stepped out of his way to show us the way to get to the community center.

When we finally reached the community center, we found that it is conveniently located in a small piazza, with a small cooperation shop, pharmacy, and tabacchi (small store selling newspapers, and your daily trivial needs) located nearby. A church is nearby, also a nicely arranged cemetery.

The lady in the community registration center was very helpful and the process only took few minutes given that we provided all the necessary documents. We only now need to wait for their information when our forms are done being processed.

It was a peaceful morning in that piazza, several locals were sitting on the benches, some old ladies were doing their groceries, a beautiful mountainous view enclosing the scenery. We enjoyed such view while we waited for the bus that would take us directly to our campus after we were done with the registration.

Four bus lines are operating on bus stops nearby our place. This one that we particularly waiting for is newly established and really is there connecting our apartment and the university directly. Another one serves to go up further to the community center and to downtown city. Another one serves to go up to my campus and downtown. Another one strictly goes to down town.

I realized... despite the minuscule size of our apartment, despite the freezing cold inside it now, and the still unorganized boxes of our stuffs that are laying here and there, it is a convenient and beautiful environment that we are living in now.

Even though the comfort of Indonesia is still fresh in our mind, and still we are aching as ever to be back there, in the warmth of our families and loved ones, to be back in the culture that we've grown accustomed to since our childhood, we are here now. It is our home now.