If You Build It, or something.

I slept too late today, I really did. But it wasn't just me. By the time that I was up and ready for the day, I still hadn't heard from the other assistants with whom I was supposedly meeting up at a café for them to have internet access. By 10 a.m. when I finally got to Café Eqwi - our current haunt due to the fact that there's wifi (pronounced "wee fee" in French) and it's at a very central location - there were only a couple of us already there. The others arrived pretty quickly with a handful of classifieds and real estate publications, most of which wanted a lot of money to purchase not very much space.

Before diving into the classifieds, Madeline, the girl with whom I've been apartment searching, and I walked over to Book in Bar, the English bookstore to search for apartment postings one more time. I called one number I hadn't seen before, but it was no good. Many of the apartments posted in various places are already rented out by the time you call the number, even if the publication was printed on the same day. This particular one wasn't able to be rented for another month, and I can't really wait that long.

We gave up and went back to Café Eqwi. It didn't take us too long to realize that we were stuck. Most of the apartments were out of our price range, not the right size/number of bedrooms, or something else, and many of them had an "hono." or agency fee of about the cost of one month's rent attached to them. That "hono" came before a security deposit of one to two month's rent, and when you're looking at a 900 euro apartment, even split between two people, those extra costs and fees run up costs pretty quickly.

Another assistant, Florence, found her studio through an agency, so we decided to try going with them. Four of us, Florence for guidance, Liz, Madeline, and I went to the real estate agency to talk to them about prospective apartments. Their system is that they'll check and see what and how many spaces they have available to your specifications, and you pay them a flat fee of 190€ for them to provide their list to you. From there, you make all the phone calls and arrangements to go see apartments, which, for a native English speaker with very rusty French on a cheap cell phone with poor reception is quite a daunting task. But on we plodded.

Madeline and I were actually very fortunately able to split the agency fee, so it turned out to only be 95€ each, which would have been a good amount to pay if we had ended up finding our places through the agency. Madeline and I split up the list - about fourteen apartments total: several of which were visibly out of our price range, and most of the rest of which were only one bedroom. When you live with a stranger, you want your own bedroom!

So, of the ones we called, the only acceptable place we found was already rented out. Go figure, right?

We actually got so frustrated that we went back to the agency to say, "Look, these won't do, you need to find us some more!" or some variation of that (in French). The lady there said that our maximum price that we were willing to pay was too low and our standards were too high and that we needed to go back and call some of the other people back. That wasn't really what we wanted to do.

But we did it anyway and made a bit of progress. We actually went to see a beautiful "grande studio" on the top floor of a bed and breakfast. It had a lovely kitchen, a nice living area, and a loft with a queen (or bigger) bed, a bathtub, and a terrace. If it had been available before the 16th of October, which she hadn't told us or we hadn't understood over the phone, we possibly would have considered it. But, like the one we looked at yesterday, it seemed to be geared more towards a couple that towards roommates, with one big bed instead of two beds/rooms.

We met back up with Liz and Florence after that; they'd been making the same kinds of contacts that we had except about studios. Liz was adamant from the beginning that she wanted to live alone, which is fine, but she, too has yet to find a place to live. We went to Florence's studio, which used to be a restaurant in an alley way and has a metal grate locked by a u-bold bike lock instead of a front door, and a sliding glass door behind that. It's  very small; I would guess it measures about 17m^2, but I haven't really gotten down the square meters thing yet, so I'm not certain. All that said, it's quite a cool space and she really seems to be fond of her landlord, and that's great! I'm glad she found it as quickly as she did.

In the rounds of calling out of papers and whatnot this morning, I had called a number about a tiny studio. The ad says it's 14m^2. The man I spoke to on the phone gave me another number to call, which he patiently recited to me probably three or four times before I was able to actually understand all the numbers. The sound quality on my phone is really, really bad, and the French speak really, really fast. Well, I called that number and received no answer, so I called the man back. I half expected this to annoy him, but he seemed unperturbed, and told me that the apartment was still available and to call that number back in the evening, which I did.

In the meantime, I went with the other three assistants at Vauvenargues to introduce ourselves to the headmaster. He asked if we all had lodging, and I explained what had happened to him. He called the lady who told me Tuesday that there were no rooms and explained to her that if I didn't have a place to live by tomorrow, that they were going to rearrange so that two men who are staying there twice a week for free would be staying in the same room and I would get a room at the school.

The school housing's advantages are that it is incredibly cheap and that it is incredibly close by just about everything. The school housing's disadvantages are that the "kitchen" consists of a mini-fridge and a toaster that doesn't work. Being someone who quite likes food, this lack of a kitchen quite bothers me, so I'm hoping that I'll end up with a tiny (14m^2) studio with an oven and a stove. However, having the ability to move into the school as a fallback makes me very, very happy. Perhaps this apartment will work out due to the fact that I'm not in need anymore. Who knows?

So, after that, Chris and I walked down to the Cours Mirabeau to wait for Michelle so that we could go get un café (coffee; it's good for words to mean two things, I guess) and then go out for pizza (which is kind of a different experience here than, say Mazzio's). Before Michelle caught up with us, I called the number the man had given me this morning. I spoke to a woman who told me that the place was still for rent, but that she had someone coming to look at it at 7:00, and could I call her again at 8. I told her I would call her back.

Michelle showed up and we walked down the road to meet Hannah, an American from Virginia who is an assistant at Lycée Emile Zolà (another high school in Aix). She seemed happy to have company; she got here earlier this week and hadn't been in touch with anyone before she came, so she seemed to feel odd contacting us. We, of course, were thrilled to have her company.

So, we went for pizza and Lucy and Joanna met us, although Chris had to go find them as they got lost in town, and then Michelle got lost in town trying to find them and came back to us to say that she'd been lost and could someone else go. It was rather comical. Then Michelle broke her knife trying to cut through her pizza, which was also rather comical.

We had a lovely dinner, and at 8:00, I excused myself temporarily to call the lady about the apartment. The people who saw it at 7:00 didn't rent it (yet?), and I made an appointment to go see it at 2 p.m. tomorrow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's perfect and has somewhere to cook things, but if it's not and/or doesn't, I've got school lodging for just over half the price.

Going around with Chris is quite a linguistic experience. Being English, he is quite adamant that french fries are chips and that chips are crisps, as well as a lot of other things. Hannah was in a sorority at her university, and she and I tried to explain that to him, although with little success. This led to that, and by the time we were finished with dinner, I was trying to explain to him the Hotty Toddy cheer, by which he seemed highly entertained. Most of all, he laughed at the fact that we said "flim flam" at any point in time which, to him (and perhaps to all of us if we really stop and think about it), is ridiculously comical.

I'm back at Mme. Trotman's home tonight. We spoke (in French, although not always) for a bit about things, and she headed off to bed. I believe I shall await a less stressful day tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that the studio I'm going to look at is perfect, and I will keep mine crossed that my first day of work tomorrow goes swimmingly!