WHERE ARE WE????

On Tuesday morning, 7-5, Silva asked to see our apartment confirmation.  The next email from her was another "Emergency!"  This time the emergency was that we needed to cancel our apartment booking.  The place we had rented was in a very unsafe area of the city.

You might be asking why would 2 Americans, who can't speak the language of the country we are going to,  parents of 4 children already, and parents of a soon to be adopted child who needs to come and live in this apartment with us- why would we rent an apartment in an unsafe area?  

ANSWER: Because we didn't think we were in that area.  We thought we were on another street.  

Before we booked, we ran the address past Silva who said it was a good area.  When we got our confirmation, there was a map with a little bubble showing that street location.

Only after Silva looked at our confirmation on Tuesday, did she notice in small print another street name that indicated where this particular apartment was.  

Not to be over obsessed with map bubbles, but the map didn't indicate this other street.  It showed our apartment to be on "Street A" in safe area.  The fine print indicated a "Street B" in unsafe area.

And again, not knowing this other language, we didn't catch this second street name, we thought this word was referring to the name of the particular apartment we were renting.  I know.  As I am typing this, I see we sound like very dumb American tourists!

Very thankful Silva caught this before we put ourselves in not a nice place.  We were able to find another apartment in the original SAFE area we thought we were in.

Good news: The property owner did offer a partial refund which is nice because it was a nonrefundable reservation.  

Of course, because we feel a bit mislead by the booking, we think a full refund wouldn't be totally unreasonable to expect.  

The bad news is we are not 100% sure the partial refund will ever be seen.  When we requested the refund, the property owner wanted our bank info to transfer the money to- that was a red flag!!!!!  Yikes, anyway we are working through Paypal to get the refund and have asked our credit card to help us dispute the charge.  We are praying the Lord will help this mistake of ours be resolved.  I would like to not pay for an apartment that we never use.  I think we could probably find other ways to better spend that money :) 

So lesson learned?  I don't know, don't trust map bubbles? :)   

No, I don't really know what lesson we take from this except always try to know where you are...

Or maybe better yet, always remember none of us ever really have much of a clue where we are in life. It is only by God's grace we get where we need to be.

Expect the unexpected, right?