The "living" part of "living in Paris": a hard fought battle

There has been a lot going on in the past few weeks, so I have written several blog posts for it all and will post them all at once. Hopefully I won’t spend an entire post on one day, as I did above, for every other day that I’ve been here… but as Mark Twain has so aptly put it: “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I’m writing you a long one”.

After that first day, which I handled surprisingly well I think, I began the long and arduous search for an apartment (with a little reacquainting myself with Paris thrown in every day as well). To make a long story short, it’s hard. There are a lot of rejections, a lot of super awkward messages (speaking French on the phone is much harder than it is in person) and a lot of doing the same thing all day every day. But, as there is often a silver lining, the one possible tangible benefit of it all (aside from actually getting an apartment) is that my French improved immensely within a matter of days. Making dozens of dozens of calls to people that have no sympathy for your slow French and horrible accent and who have no desire whatsoever to slow down or enunciate to help you out in any way can really force you to pull yourself together.

So I did, and after a few weeks my chosen roommate (another teaching assistant, whom I met on the group list serve) and I found ourselves a reasonably priced apartment. For those of you that know Paris, it is in the Marais, or the 3^rd arrondissement right by the Centre Pompidou with a clear view of Notre Dame right down the street. Very central location, which is nice because my roommate and I are working in complete opposite parts of the district of Créteil, which made it surprisingly difficult to find a location that suited both of us. Even so, we both still have a commute of about one hour, which isn’t horrible and is a price we are willing to pay to live in Paris.

Slowly but surely we are beginning to organize our three room apartment, buying furniture, decorations, etc. I am really looking forward to this whole process, and I really feel like we lucked out (only spending 2 weeks or so looking, when many people spend a month or more). It looks pretty plain now (Pictures to come soon!), but I am in no position to be dissatisfied with anything at this point.