You may have heard the saying "When the shit hits the fan". Another one is "Bad luck comes in threes". Either one, we just had to learn what they mean ...
When I moved to the U.S. in September of 2006, I thought that it would be a lot harder to start my life here in a new country. It all went actually pretty smooth back then; I moved, rented an apartment, bought a car, found a job, ... Everything went really well. Now, almost three years later, when I least expected it, my girlfriend and I had to go through some pretty tough times and within only one month we had to deal with several not so minor incidents.
Long story short, after having lived on the west side of Los Angeles for about a year, we decided to move to Long Beach. We found a nice little house in walking distance to the beach that we wanted to rent. Two bedrooms, bathroom, living room, kitchen, washer & dryer and a little garden. We signed a lease agreement for a year and moved in on July 7th. Of course, we had to pay for the movers, truck, bought a refrigerator and some other stuff for our apartment. And as usual, we paid the first month's rent plus a deposit to our landlord.
Two weeks later we received a letter from a real estate company telling us that the house got sold (foreclosed) - even before we actually signed our lease agreement - and that there was a new owner of the house! Within a couple of weeks, we had to find a new place and move again (of course, our deposit was gone, since the old owner of the house filed for bankruptcy).
After looking at several other options, we decided to move back to our old place which we just had left a little while ago. For the second time in only one month, we had to pay for the movers, the truck, first month's rent plus a deposit ... And of course we had double the fun with packing and unpacking all of our stuff, turning on/off all the appliances, changing addresses on bills ... I am sure, you get the picture ...
Two weeks later, my car broke down. I had to have it towed and learned that it was the transmission. I figured that it wasn't worth fixing it, so I had to rent a car for a couple of days, find a new car and sell my old one.
Today, we are back in a nice apartment on the west side of Los Angeles, I have a new car and I am training again for Mount Whitney (9/29) and the Long Beach Marathon (10/11). It almost feels like all this never happened, but I will remember these 6 weeks in the summer of 2009 for a while. What I learned from this experience is that bad luck comes in threes. But also that there is always a solution for every problem and a way out. And last, but not least, that we can count on our family and friends. They were there for us when we needed them and helped to make this experience so much more bearable. We are very thankful for that.
Want to leave a comment? Just click on COMMENTS below.
