Chicago Apartment Lease Unfurnished: Fill & Download for Free

If possible visit first. Realize you will be moving to a city part way up an Active Volcano. There are tremors often, there can be serious earthquakes any time, a year or 2 after I moved back to the States there was such heavy ash fall that outside at midday it was pitch black. If you speak Spanish already, I would check carefully before buying or signing a long term lease. The difference between the awful earthquake in Haiti, which killed more than 250,000 people, and other earthquakes of similar magnitude in California, Chile, and Japan which killed dozens or hundreds, was building codes.If you live in a state which doesn't have earthquakes, landslides, or volcanos, and don't speak Spanish yet, I would see what resources are available through the California Geological Survey or their Universities generally, watch PBS and NatGeo documentaries about volcanos and earthquakes, and one Nova in particular about the El Oso landslide which seemed very pertinent to me. John McPhee wrote a long essay for the New Yorker which was one of 3 collected into a book called the Control of Nature. He is scathing about developers who build on avalanche tracks and debris fans, and unwitting buyers.None of these things would stop me from moving back there if I didn't have family ties here. I LOVE Quito. They are safety considerations I would take seriously though.As far as the dangers of city life I felt much safer in Quito than I did when I lived in Chicago 30 years ago, and I felt safe in Chicago. Normal big city caution worked fine.Two other factors about where you might want to settle: one thing which bothered me a lot, but almost subliminally, was day length. On the equator the day is 12 hours long every day of the year. That in itself was very wearing. I lived in La Floresta most of the 2 years I was there. It's across from the mountains, so we got full sun. Then the guest household I lived in moved across the valley to a neighborhood on the side of the mountain. We were in the shadow of the mountain by 3 or 4. It made a huge difference. It was also much colder.Another thing to consider about permanent abode is the trade off between altitude and mosquitos. At the time I lived there there were bars but no screens in the windows. We were above most bugs. If you live at 8,500 or 9,000 feet that is almost surely still true. But there is no central heating. Folks have fire places. The rainy season is called winter because it can rain for days. When you are already at 9,000 feet and the rain is coming down from way high above you it brings a lot of cold. An expat american friend of mine remarked bitterly that the farenheit thermometer In Her Kitchen, one morning after the 5th straight day of rain, read 41 degrees. The country is on the metric system. If you want a farenheit thermometer bring one.I got pregnant while I was living there, so it was very nice that I didn't have to take any antimalarials, as many tourists do when they go down off the altitude. I'm not sure what expats do. I have no info about zika. I do know that ecosystems are creeping up the mountains all over the world.In Quito 20 years ago shorts were strictly for tourists. Nobody from Quito wore them in public unless they were going on a picnic at a lower altitude, or something like that. In the rainy season there were days when people wore at least a sweater or a windshell all day. In the rest of the year the climate went through spring, summer and fall once a day. In the early morning people sat on a shady veranda in sweaters, then shirts then by late morning tshirts and shorts while in the yard. In the afternoon the whole procedure went into reverse. Long sleeves or sweaters at supper time, a fall jacket by late evening, two heavy blankets on the bed at night. I personally always wore a t-shirt and long pants, and tied a cotton sweater around my waist even at mid day, and usually found the same sweater ok with a windshell over it well on into the evening. When I was away from home at night I was walking briskly.If you are a normal size, there are marvelous handicraft choices for sweaters and wool vests easily and cheaply available. A lot of them are knitted big enough to sell to tourists. I would use those and just bring a good windshell and maybe a thin cotton sweater from home. I would trade off space in my luggage for an electric heater and good hiking boots, and walking shoes, and binoculars, which would have been prohibitively expensive to buy in Quito. If you are fat or tall or have big feet or are different in any other way consider bringing plenty of clothes and shoes, particularly if you are an american woman who wants dress shoes. I am 5' 8". There is a photo of me in a plaza looking at a puppet show, with a sea of Ecuadorian men around me and my whole head rising above them. For a woman I was enormous. I could have shirts and dresses made, but underwear would have been a problem and if I had wanted a new bra I would have had to find someone who could tailor it. They surely must have someone who makes mastectomy supplies? Things may have changed. When I was there people used to go shopping in Miami. I had spent a couple of months in Mexico about 15 years prior to moving to Quito, so I brought several bluejeans and a ton of underthings along.The parabolic heater my landlady provided was one of my fond memories. Our household also had a totally awesome gas demand water heater in the bathroom. No electric showers for us. I don't have any particular fond memories about heating devices from my life in the States. Our house had a washing machine too! Very exciting. Consult expats.The main heat in my house was fires. Firewood was delivered once a week. The firewood available was eucalyptus and pretty green. We used cera (floor wax) as a fire starter. It came in a one liter bag much longer and skinnier than a liter bag of milk. A liter of wax was good for 3 or 4 fires. Apartment buildings didn't have fireplaces. Probably baseboard electric heaters are the thing. My working class friends just had lots of sweaters and blankets. But if you are looking for a home, or even a guest house, fireplaces are important.Unless things have changed a lot, one thing you will be dealing with is rolling blackouts. The main source of power for the city then was hydroelectricity. At certain seasons there wasn't enough water behind the dam for the generators to run flat out. The blackouts were scheduled in 8 hour shifts, and the rotation was published. There is no problem about refrigeration as long as you don't have to open the freezer much. Lots of folks don't own fridges. They just step around to the corner store in the morning to buy fresh bread or rolls and a liter bag of milk. If I had insulin to keep fresh or whatever I would freeze a few liters of water ahead of time. People who need elevators or oxygen concentrators have a bit more to think about.Depending on why you are moving there, I know there are expats settling in the next valley over from the valley Quito is in. I believe it is cheaper, lower, warmer, and about a 40 minute bus ride from some transit hub. That would also be farther from the Active Volcano. There are actually 2 mountains there. The smaller one is called guagua (pronounced wawa-means baby) Pichincha. I am fairly sure it's the big one that is active. Quito itself is only as wide as its valley, but miles and miles long. So there are a lot of choices.I personally loved La Floresta and would choose it again if I wanted to live in Quito. It was above the place in the valley where colonial Quito divides from the modern business part of downtown. I could easily walk to a cheap bus, or if I wanted to could walk down into the valley to coffee shops and so on. I walked to my language school and I think to the supermarket. But I lived in a part where the valley wall between two foothills had been knocked away. It was beautiful to watch the fog fall down over what IIRC is called la ceja de orillana. Next time I would find a place at least half way up one of those foothills, rather than at the lowest point in the landscape across from the Active Volcano. I hope you are sensing a theme here.If you've already bought or rented then that's that. If not my strong suggestion is to stay in a guest house, not a hotel, for at least a month, and sign up for at least 4 weeks of spanish classes. I tried to do the 7 hours a day plan and found it way too intense. Usually the schools offer 4 hours in the morning, 5 days a week. Maybe it is only 4 days. Anyway that's what I would ask for. I bet you could arrange to have your teacher be your interpreter on the 5th day if you need one. She will be someone you know, who might be willing to go with you while you explore neighborhoods to see where you want to settle. Even if you are fluent there is always something to work on. If you are a novice spanish speaker Quito is great. Quitenos speak slowly relative to other spanish speakers, are somewhat more formal, and finish their words. For that reason, it and Antigua, Guatemala were the top 2 choices for language schools when I was deciding where to go. I picked Quito out of a guidebook, and have never regretted it.Last night I was thinking of getting settled as something like rock climbing. Not that I am necessarily comparing touring South America to a walk in the park. But it came to me that the rule about having 3 firm contact points while you move the 4th could be very useful.The school would be my first contact point. You will be able to make arrangements with them even if you speak no Spanish at all. They can also set you up with a host family or a guest house (casa de huespedes).I would rent from a guest house because the one I lived in before had a steady stream of Europeans through it, many of whom had come to Ecuador a number of times and knew a lot about interesting stuff, and all of whom spoke English. I found it very important to have a place where the strain was off, and made a couple of friends with whom I could cook or whatever and not have to struggle. And, main advantage, the business owners in many of these guest houses are expats themselves. There were lots of expats in Quito running guest houses or tours or similar things when I lived there. Brains to pick!Quora itself is the third. Aside from the contacts you have here, there are folks on the Quora ES side who are native speakers of English, at least one of whom seems to be an American expat who has lived in Quito 20 years.Service opportunities are 4th. What can you do to heal the world? How can you do it in Quito? You may meet very interesting folks where you volunteer.If you have no objection to church I know 2 English language ones. I attended the English Fellowship Church. It started at Southern Baptists and went more conservative from there. I liked it very much although I am not a conservative. I got started there because the hospital I volunteered at had been founded by folks from that church.The other one I know personally is a combined Lutheran and Episcopalian outfit quite near La Floresta. IIRC the Lutheran services in Spanish and German weren't alternating, but the English service was Episcopalian and Lutheran on alternating Sundays, and if there was a 5th sunday in the month there was a combined service. It was main line, not evangelical, and would have been a better fit for me if I hadn't found the other first. They are totally serious about Christianity. Both pastors met with me when I asked for my son to be baptized there, and grilled me for a couple of hours about why I wanted him baptized since I wasn't a Christian myself. (Simple enough. I was moving back to the States, and wanted his father, a deeply convinced practising Catholic, to know that his child was safe. My church didn't do infant baptism.) But I felt that if I had stayed in Quito I could have happily taken my nonChristian self there for years and been perfectly welcome. If you are agnostic but religion doesn't bother you, or if you don't mind worshipping with people of a different faith, these could possibly be other contact points even for nonChristians.It is hard to move to a place where you don't know anyone and don't know the language. That seems totally obvious. Dumb thing to say. Of course it's hard. I think it is worth saying anyhow. Culture shock is real. For me it was most real between month three and month 6. My house was right under the flight path away from the old airport. I had no intention of leaving, but for months I looked up at every plane a few hundred feet above my head and felt very intensely “I could be on you.” Make sure you have 3 points of solid contact and move the 4th. Get your guest house and language thing going so that you aren't alone while you start getting to know the Quorans and expats and Quitenos who will be your way forward there. Even if you are not a person who ever socializes, just having other people around in the background will probably help.There will be unknown unknowns. For instance, Americans normally expect a fridge and stove to be included where they rent an unfurnished apartment. Nope.There will be known unknowns. If you aren't from earthquake country, what do you do on the 8th floor in a pretty strong shake, when everybody reacts and one of the women shouts “Temblor!” and runs? I just stood there, probably with my mouth open, until I noticed that half the people in the room were also just standing there. Then I went back and sat down.One answer I saw in this thread said Make sure you have medical insurance. If you are a traveler, absolutely. If you are staying, talk to expats. When I was there they mostly paid cash. I paid cash when my son was born. At that time it cost 10,000 USD for an uncomplicated delivery in the States. In Quito you have to pay the whole amount up front, so I put down my hundred dollars. I had an uncomplicated delivery, but my son came pretty quickly and I had previously talked with my obstetrician about wishing I could have had him at home. The upshot was that he was born in my private room. Since I hadn't used the delivery room, when I checked out, out of my hundred I got 40 dollars change. This was in sucres, of course.I absolutely would not worry about routine medical or dental care, or eye glasses or anything. If you need specialized meds bring a couple of months worth from home and figure out how you are going to get them before you sign a lease. If you are retiring to Quito be aware that Medicare won't cover you there. Because the public hospitals don't supply drugs or I.V.s, and because there are many more medications available over the counter, pharmacists play a much broader role as consultants than they do in the States. There was always a published schedule of the “farmacia del turno" so people would know whose turn it was to stay open all night.In the 90s I thought the health care at Hospital Vos Andes, the private hospital where I volunteered, was much like health care in a good hospital in the States in the 70s. Doctors told you what to do and expected you to do it more than they do here. Also pain control for minor things might not be what you expect. I saw a traumatologist pull pins or something out of a woman's arm that he had put in weeks prior without either providing lidocaine or telling her to take ibuprofen in advance. He wasn't cutting into her. I can't remember this clearly, but whatever it was was accessible from the surface. She didn't cry out, so it can't have been that bad, but it was clearly rougher than she thought, and she did bitch to me about it later.Check with expats, and find a doctor you feel comfortable with who speaks English well. If you are sick or hurt it will be much simpler and safer that way than if you are also trying to cope with Spanish. I was very grateful to the American nurse midwife I knew from church who stayed with me when I had the baby, and I was fluent by then.Be very wary of the sun. In daylight it is mostly the atmosphere that protects us (you leave Van Allen belts right out of this!). Higher than 8,000 feet, on the Equator, there is a lot less up there to do the protecting, and a lot more radiation coming in, than anyone from a temperate zone would expect. It is easy to sunburn when you don't feel hot. Being cool or cold tends to make people let their guard down. Prescription sunglasses are a good idea if you need glasses. They may be cheaper here. The whole time I was there I wore a hat. I have had a squamous cell lesion removed from my eyebrow anyway, and you can see the outline of my t-shirt neckline 20 years later in the form of age related blemishes. I didn't wear sunscreen. Take warning by me.You have a couple of big advantages now that I didn't. 1) the internet, 2) the fact that Ecuador uses the US dollar. You can very easily check prices, to see if those glasses, or that space heater, will be just as cheap there. You can get books and movies and news from home. I was the last generation for whom that wasn't true. If you have questions about any of that, other Quorans will be able to help. The only thing I know for sure is that when I lived there there was an 8 year wait or an 800 dollar bribe to get a telephone landline. Check whether or not it will be simple and cheap to set up internet in your home.Both the houses I lived in had yards inside the outer walls. Most single family dwellings don't. If people want greenery they go to parks. I don't spend a lot of time in the yard, but over the long haul I found that having that green area mattered a lot.Quito is a wonderful city for people who love flowers. It is often chilly but never freezes, so tropical and temperate plants both grow, and many temperate plants grow at the same time which at home would belong in different seasons. Roses and irises and impatience and hollyhocks and zinnias, and sweet alysum and sedums and marigolds… I don't think pointsettias grow that high, or bougainvillia. They grow in Otavalo. I bet you could grow them against a sunny masonry wall. Even if you don't have a yard it would be a fantastic place for a container garden. There are also humming birds the size of sparrows. I think I have seen in my yard the largest humming bird species in the world.I didn't travel after I knew I was pregnant. I wanted to stay away from mosquitos and near my doctor, and at that time how well the blood for transfusions was screened was a big issue in Ecuador. However I know there are wonderful sites nearby for bird watching, hiking and so on, and Quito is the best place to arrange Galapagos tours. Whenever Quitenos want to get warmed through they go straight down the mountains. You can get to either the coast or the rainforest in a day of travel, or you can fly and get there much faster.An advantage of living maybe 8 hours from the coast is that the seafood coming up the mountain can be incredibly fresh. I ate out a lot. I had a good female friend who worked downtown, and met her every day for the fixed price menu lunch. At that time it cost 1 USD for a plate with a moderate amount of meat or fish, a big serving of starch (sometimes boiled yuca or potatos, mostly rice, with some kind of gravy or sauce), and a cooked vegetable or maybe platanos dorados (fried starchy bananas-dorado means made golden.) There was a postre (desert), and a glass of quaker (kuah ker), a boiled drink made with fruit of some sort and thickened with a little oatmeal, or an aguita. Drinking water should be boiled. Most people do that with herbs, or something like passionfruit or tamarind. Thus, aguita. I heard the price doubled when they went on the dollar. It went up to USD 2 a meal.Food in Quito was not cooked with hot spices. It had fresh hot sauce (aji) on the table, and everybody put what they wanted. I never used any. The food was not too bland for me. Even without hot sauce I found it very tasty. And of course there are restaurants there with cuisine from around the world. Be careful to use picante about food spice. Caliente, which means hot like a hot day, also means hot like sexy. Lunchtime is about when it is here, but supper can be quite late. In the late afternoon many people have coffee and a roll. In one way it is just backward from here. The roll is unsweetened like a dinner roll, and the coffee is intensely sweet.I also ate in various homes, and at seafood restaurants and cafes. I never got sick. The regular tourist rules (avoid salad!) would be good to follow until you know folks there you can ask.I had a missionary friend, a nurse, who kept a 5 gallon bucket in her kitchen, half filled with water and the recommended amount of bleach. She would dunk all fruits and vegetables that couldn't be peeled. She kept the bucket covered and only changed the water every few days. She kept them in the bleach water the least amount of time possible, and rinsed them in water she had boiled. No food I ate in her house ever tasted of bleach to me. I am fairly sure she washed dishes in unboiled city water. That's what we did where I lived. The city actually had water purification, but enough people tapped into it that integrity couldn't be maintained at that time.People with schoolaged kids are in luck. They can break the ice anywhere. If you don't want to homeschool be aware that everyone who can sends their children to private schools. There was at least one in English. Missionary kids were sent to board there from all over South America. The first place I was going to check out if I had stayed that long in Quito would have been the Brazilian school. At that time it cost 100 USD a month. My son's father’s rent was 80. I think there is a lot for kids to do in Quito if their parents look around.All the cultural richness you've seen in guide books and all the rave reviews about any kind of ecotourism you can imagine are perfectly true to the best of my knowledge. But it was also true that when I lived there the city could seem very stodgy, and sometimes people took what seemed like a long long time to get to know. Of course, I was in my late 30s, and my going out club hopping or dancing in bars nights were well behind me. Quitenos are a bit more formal and reserved than others may be. Keep at it. It is well worth while. I very strongly agree with the person from Quito who posted on this thread advice to get out of the expat bubble. I have been saying consult expat this, consult expat that as a way of getting a safe start, but if that is where you stop it will be a shame.That's all I can think of that will help.

The best and safest way is to find a reputable Corporate Housing company in the area you’re looking at. This can also be found by searching “fully furnished apartments”, “short term rentals”, or just “corporate housing”. There are a million listings to be found on the internet for this, but tread carefully. Craigslist postings can occasionally be fruitful, but more often than not are scams, and I would advise against this route.For instance, in Chicago, Pinnacle Furnished Suites is a great resource. A call to a company like this will get you a list of options to choose from, in various neighborhoods, for various price points.Rule 1 - Don’t trust online listings or postings for pricing or availability. Always check.Rule 2 - Make sure you talk to a real person or vet the company you’re setting this up withRule 3 - Make sure you understand that short term leases, or furnished apartments, will carry a monthly premium over standard long term unfurnished leasesHere is a list of Frequently Asked Questions associated with this topic that may be useful. The list is for PFsuites, but the topics are general in nature and may apply to your particular scenario.Frequently Asked Questions | PFSuites