Puks and the city

Hi all,
I've decided it's time I'll write a little bit and tell you how's it going for us.

So we got here 2 weeks ago - 13/6. we landed around 16:30.

Passport inspection

Elad was taken away in the passport inspection - they took him to another room for further investigation. I saw him go with the officer - but he didn't say anything.
I waited, and waited, and waited... after about 40 minutes he came out and all he said was "let's get out of here".
Apparently he had some problems convincing them he's not coming to the US to work illegally.
3 hours after we landed we got to Hila's apartment, went to eat and sleep.

Apartment hunting

The next couple of days were dedicated to apartments hunting.
Combining our 3 laptops (Elad's, Hila's, and my new work laptop) we opened Craig's list (the American very successful version of Yad2\Homeless) the New York times real estate section, a management buidlings directory site and many more web sites looking for optional apartments for us.
We made lists and started calling many people, make appointments and asking questions. There were some cases we realized we were speaking English with an Israeli guy/girl ...
We also talked to some local Israeli friends trying to see if they know of or can help us with finding a good place.
We started traveling NY by foot and subway, going into buildings in good locations ans asking them if they have available apartments.
All in all we saw about 20-25 apartments, some were dumps, some were way over our budget.

The Apartment

Back in Israel, I found a site of a management company which had 2 buildings in the upper east side. We talked to the company, they said they have 1BR apartments in a building called "The Highgate" starting at 2650$. At that time we understood that it'll be very hard to find a place for under 2500$ so we decided to go and have a look.
That was the first apartment that we were both very enthusiastic about when we saw it!
Large rooms, lots of light, big kitchen, brand new fridge/oven/micro/dishwasher (Avi!!! Dishwasher!), lot's of closets, good looking bathroom, doorman in the building, elevators, and quite. On top of that, it was really close to a subway and a cross town bus.
It was just what we were looking for.
The attached picture, describes the apartment layout.

Small glossary

Management company - is a company that manages building. I'm not sure if they own the buildings, but they are in charge of several buildings, they are renting them, collecting the rent, fixing every problem in the apartment, renovate from time to time, and that's how they make their money.

Management building - is a building which is managed by a company. The good thing about it, is that you can rent an apartment in it without a broker involved - and save a lot of money.

Cross town bus - As you probably know, Manhattan is divided to several areas, but mostly it's divided into the east side and the west side. In the upper part of Manhattan, the park separates between the east and west. So cross town bus, is a bus that takes you from the east end to the west end, and from the west to the east.