This past week has been nothing but exhilarating. We started our journey to San Francisco by driving from San Antonio to Austin. Mind you, we had our cat Regina with us. I was given a sedative by the vet for her, but she was trying her hardest to fight it. The drive was nearly 2 hours with traffic. We arrived and had to check our 4 large bags full of clothes we brought, and then go through security. They wanted me to take Regina out of the bag so that they could scan it, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that, especially when I overheard the TSA agents joking about how a cat got loose once and everyone was running around trying to find it. I had the option of going into a private room to hold her while they took the bag to be scanned. They should always give you this option and my advice is to take it, especially if you have a cat. Just make sure to get to the airport with plenty of time…because it takes time. Overall, the TSA agents were nice and accommodating. During the flight Regina did relatively okay and I think she just didn’t understand what was going on. We arrived in SF and we quickly dropped our bags off where we were staying and then headed to drop Regina off to where she was staying. My friend Emma Morris hooked me up with a friend of a friend of a friend, who was willing to temporarily take Regina in while we found a place. My option before Emma made this connection for me was unfortunately boarding her, so I was SO SO grateful. I’m happy to say that she's doing well and I get updates and pictures all the time.
Thursday and Friday consisted of interviews for both Paul and I. Thursday, Paul was up at 4:30am and left at 5:00am to catch a flight to Portland where he had an interview. My first interview was at 11:00am. It was with a sunglasses company based in SF and I was interviewing for a social media position. I was freakingggggg out, especially since Paul wasn’t here to go through the motions with me. But, after the interview, I thought it went pretty well and I was feeling good about everything. Friday I had 2 interviews and Paul had another one as well. My interviews were pretty much back to back; 12:00pm and 2:00pm. The first was for a PR firm doing social media and the second was for a clothing company doing social media as well. I thought I did terrible this round of interviews. The first interview was one that I was really looking forward to and really excited about, and I think I psyched myself out a bit. Then that feeling just escalated going from the first to the second interview. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Friday at this point. The weekend approached and we decided to go look at areas around SF that we were considering living. We spent nearly our whole Saturday going from one area to the next, seeing and figuring out what felt right. Also, we got ourselves Clipper cards so that we could ride the bus and Bart more easily (aka we are slowly becoming locals, right?) On Sunday we went to check out a couple Farmers Markets and just explored a little more.
THEN, WE GOT SOME NEWS. We were back at the house, and Paul got an email. He got a job offer from the company he had an interview with in Portland!!! He will be a Management Consultant with this company. We were so ecstatic! We decided to go for dinner and drinks to celebrate. Side note: Usually in order to rent a place here in SF, you need to have good credit and at least a job offer, if not an actual job. Before this amazing news, we didn’t have any job offers so it was kind of hard to actually look at places because we probably wouldn’t be considered. So Paul getting this offer made things so much easier for us. We immediately called a realty agent we had been communicating with and set up some viewings for Tuesday. We couldn’t wait to view some places. Monday rolls around and we didn’t have much planned. We tried to go to De Young Museum since we didn’t get to see it when we visited in June, but it is closed on Mondays. Womp womp. We continued to walk around and take everything in. We were walking in Golden Gate Park when I looked down at my phone to check my email.
I GOT A JOB OFFER TOO! I received a job offer as a Digital Assistant Account Executive for the company I was crossing my fingers for all along. I seriously couldn’t believe it! I showed Paul and we just couldn’t stop laughing with excitement. We decided to go back to our place to make carbonara and then to go out for drinks later that night to celebrate again. Tuesday is here and we go look at places. We don’t start until noon, but from noon to about 5:30pm, we view 9 or 10 places. There was one that stood out right away and we filled out an application for it. The tenants were still living there and wouldn’t be out until August 15th. There was already someone that was interested so we weren’t sure what our odds were and continued looking.
A few hours later our agent called us telling us WE GOT APPROVED FOR THE APARTMENT! I again, couldn’t believe this was happening. This place is nearly perfect and ticked almost every box. We cannot believe how well things have gone for us, and we are trying to just go with the flow. Surely things don’t go this smoothly when moving to one of the most expensive cities in the US, do they? Wednesday was a bit trickier for us, as we were to meet with the building manager and sign the lease. We needed to bring 1st month’s rent, deposit, and a cleaning fee. The building manager wanted a money order or cashiers check and we were told it would be easy to get. “Try a bank or a western union, that should work” he told us. Considering we don’t have a bank account here yet (because you need an address to set up an account and we don’t have a permanent address because we don’t have an apartment, which makes everything tricky), we were having trouble. After trying 4 banks and a Western Union, we went to the USPS and they accepted cards-except when we tried to make the money order purchase, it didn't go through because of the amount. After 4 phone calls later and our card being denied left and right, it finally worked. We were able to secure the apartment and we will hopefully be moving in at the end of August.
I feel so lucky and privileged to be in this position and to be in such a creative and unique city, and I can’t wait to officially call this place home in a few weeks. Stay tuned because I will definitely be doing a tour of our place once we get the keys! As always, thanks for reading guys.
Until next time!
Halee
