What a long day!

So, it's really hard to believe that yesterday was my 48-hour travel day. It may be harder to believe that today has been a normal length because of how much stuff was crammed into it.

Mme. Trotman is a wonderful lady, plain and simple. Not only has she put a roof over my head, but she has also fed me dinner and breakfast and dinner again. After breakfast this morning, she walked with me down to the Office du Tourisme (I'll let you guess what that one stands for), and I got a map of Aix and a classifieds list of places offering housing.

I didn't realize it then, but housing in Aix goes as soon as it is posted. We made a mistake when we didn't call every place on our list the instant the list was in my hands. Needless to say, that mistake came back to haunt us later.

So, Michelle, a girl I've been talking to online for a couple of months, met us in front of the Office du Tourisme, and offered to take me to the store where she bought her French "portable," or cell phone. Due to the nature of being abroad for a fixed period of time, getting a phone and a two-year contract was not the best of ideas. She and several of the other assistants had already bought the French equivalent of a "go phone." Since that was what I needed as well, I headed off through town with her.

Before we went to the phone store (Bouyges), we decided to stop in the "Book in a Bar" English bookstore to look at their wall of ads. What an odd place! The sign out front has a teapot with a union jack design on it, the books are in English, and there is a corkboard wall covered in various and sundry classifieds. The majority of these ads are requesting language partners - people to speak English or German or Dutch with for a certain period of time in exchange for getting to speak French with them. There was actually a listing asking for someone to help with "american." I was entertained by this. There was one apartment listed, though, and I took the ad away with me. I thought later that I should have left it and just copied down the information so that someone else could rent the apartment if it didn't turn out to be perfect for us, but I took it anyway.

So Michelle had met and been in touch with a girl named Madeline, who met up with us at Book in a Bar. Unlimited text messages are an incredible thing. She, too, is looking for a place to live in Aix, and said that perhaps we could live together.

We went by Bouyges where I spent 49 euros on a phone that will have unlimited text messages and something like 45 minutes of talk time for the next 20 days. I'll have to refill my card after that. We began our apartment searching day by having a cup of coffee (except I actually got juice) at an Italian Café in Centre Ville. It gave us some time to exchange phone numbers, get our bearings, and figure out where we wanted to begin in earnest. We left there and went to another café to meet up with another set of assistants, at least one of whom is also looking for a place to stay. En route, we happened to run into Chris, the boy who got one of the last rooms at Vauvenargues, who joined us.

I actually spent money on a bottle of water there (something I told myself I wouldn't do and for which I bought and brought a bottle with a water filter in it), but I needed to buy something and that seemed as tasty as anything at the moment. At this café, we met Liz from Chicago, Rougina from Egypt, and Florence from Vancouver. Upon arriving, Florence had paid a real estate agency to find her a place to rent and ended up with a perfect little one-bedroom place. I have yet to become convinced that it's worth the 180 extra euros to have them look for me, and since I haven't exhausted my resources QUITE yet, however close I might be, it seemed more reasonable to continue hunting on my own.

After we left there, Madeline, Liz, Florence, and I walked up to the Bureau de Jeunesse, or the "Youth Office," which supposedly had housing leads. We got a handful, but most of them were websites instead of actual listings, and since we were out about town, that wasn't particularly helpful.

It was about that time what my computer crossed my mind. And when my computer crossed my mind it struck me that I had no idea how to get back to Mme. Trotman's place. I didn't have her address because I had left it when I walked out the door in the morning, and I hadn't payed attention to where we were going because I was following someone who knew where she was, so there was no need to know where I was going. It didn't strike me until then that it would've been nice to know where I was coming from.

So, we walked back down towards the Office du Tourisme to get another copy of the classifieds listing and to make some phone calls.

Gravity works better to the south, you know. Aix seems to be a hill with the lowest point being at the southeastern most point of the city and the highest point being at the northwest. That's how a city should go. But anyway, when I say we "walked down," we literally walked down. In the meantime, we stopped at a sandwich spot on the sidewalk and got food. I had a croque-monsieur, one of my favorite things, and Liz and Madeline split a panini. It turns out that Florence is allergic to wheat and yeast, whcih makes eating sandwiches very difficult. (Aside: On a subway sandwich place this evening, I saw a sign that read, "Sandwichs.")

Before we left where we ate lunch, I called a number from the English bookstore about a place to rent. He had a one-bedroom apartment that would be available on October 1st, which would be perfect except... And we scheduled an appointment to meet with him at 6:00 p.m.

We got our ads and made several phone calls. If the foreshadowing earlier didn't hint to the outcome, we weren't able to get in touch with anyone with an available apartment, studio, or room. So, we went back to the "Book in a Bar" and looked at their classifieds again. We found one other listing, but it only slept one person, so we let Liz, who is adamant that she wants to live alone, call it. I believe that call went straight to voicemail.

We met back up with the group that we had left at the café earlier on the Cours Mirabeau - the main street in Aix - and they had found Lucia, or Lucy, the Italian assistant at Vauvenargues. She also got one of the last rooms in the school. She's very pretty and rather entertaining in the things that she says.

After that, we wandered off to get ice cream, and then Chris and I went up to Vauvenargues to try to find Mme. Trotman's address. After some waiting and an odd conversation with a "Mrs. G-something" who was married to a "Mr. Trotman" but who certainly wasn't the woman with whom I had been staying and it certainly wasn't his parents' home in which I was staying unless I happened to be in New Zeland," a very helpful male receptionist got her address and gave us the general idea of how to get there on a map.

I believe I might have mentioned this French phenomenon yesterday. When you ask someone for directions in France, they give you the next "100 kilometers" as Chris said, and tell you to "et le demandez à quelqu'un là," which means, "and ask someone there." It's hard enough as an American to get up the gumption to ask the first person how to get somewhere, but it's really irksome to spend all day asking the next person and the next person and the next person.

In our wanderings, I discovered an England-English/southern-English disconnect. We were talking about vespas and scooters and motorcycles, and I mentioned that I'd driven a 4-wheeler for the first time this summer. Chris asked me what that was and after much discussion, he said, "Oh! You mean a quad-bike. We do have those! They're rather square-ish." Go figure that one out. Take the kettle off and walk through corridors eating biscuits. (I did tell him I would make southern biscuits when I got a kitchen. That would be best.)

Eventually, Chris used the GPS on his phone to find where we were (I'll probably pay him back for the 50p. that cost with an ice cream cone or something), where we needed to be, and vaguely which way we needed to go. After finding a main road with a name, we got to a road that was the right one, but wasn't on the map. I put a large sharpie star on it and shouldn't have trouble finding my way back again.

By this time, I was rather frustrated. My phone battery died, I couldn't make any of the keys open any of the doors to Mme. Trotman's place - although I did eventually, and very proudly, I might add - and my phone was dead. So, I couldn't call anyone, I didn't know the man's number, and I'd called another lady earlier who I also couldn't get in touch with because the only number I had for her was saved in my phone.

Eventually I got inside, and by then it was time to go meet with the man about the apartment. We saw it, and it was very nice considering what we had been finding. It was a fairly spacious apartment with one double (or larger) bed, a living room with a futon ("un clic-clac"), a tv, and two small marble-top kitchen tables, a fantastic kitchen, and no doors. Who doesn't put doors between rooms! There was a connected bathroom, which is a great asset to a place in France, but it didn't suit us entirely. We decided to sleep on it and make a decision in the morning after checking the classifieds.

After that, I had an appointment with a lady out in the country - a 13 minute drive from and to town with a bus that stopped only every 30 minutes or so, and a final bus that left at 8:20. This not only wouldn't do, but I also couldn't turn on my phone due to its orneriness. So, Madeline and I walked back to Mme. Trotman's, where we got my phone working after quite some effort, and where we spoke with the lady again who told us to take a specific bus out to a specific stop and the bus left at 7:15. From the top of Aix to the bottom is about a 30 minute walk, and as we were coming up to the bus station the bus we wanted to be on drove off. I called the lady back and told her the situation and she sent me a phone number of someone (her husband?) who was in town at a doctor's appointment and could pick me up. I sent her a message back saying that I didn't think this place would work out for me.

So, Madeline and I went up to her hotel room, browsed some more classifieds, texted the others some, and I returned to Mme. Trotman's house - a place I have committed to memory or my map (sort of both) - where she fed me dinner. Tomorrow, I will perhaps begin my search a bit earlier.

For now, I'll go to bed and pretend like I'm living in a place of my own.