Neighbors

For the first time in my married/adult life, I'm getting to know neighbors. We have been married now for two years and lived in a couple of different apartment complexes. We've said the occasionaly "hi" but never moved past that to anything remotely resembling friendships.

In our first place we had those older people with the really nice car - were they building a new place? Did they lose their home in some kind of bad financial deal but managed to keep the sportscar? Don't know. And the young family whose kids jumped up and down in the apartment right above us. Names? Stories? No idea.

Our second place was in GR, and we had the same thing going on... this time a row of single folks who kept to themselves. We introduced ourselves to some of them, but never heard they were even leaving until new people popped up.

I've always felt like we were missing good opportunties to make friends.

But here we are... and already things are different. We know Sarah and Brian, 3 doors down. Brian is a year ahead of Josh in B-School. Mike and Eulia live next door with their cute little red-headed boy. He is in a doctoral program at IU and the kid likes to catch frogs. Both of those families have a dog like we do. We had Lisa and her little daughter stopped by yesterday to hang out for a little while. Lisa's husband just started school with Josh and the little girl enjoyed playing with Riley. We've also met people walking him in the evenings. I must say that I really like having neighbors that feel neighborly.

So what is the difference? Is is that we have our own little entry and even a front lawn to sit on? Does the dog help? Are people just friendlier here in Bloomington? Is it just Josh's school connections? I'm not so sure what it is... perhaps a combination of factors. I just hope this continues throughout our next 2 years here.