Settling in

Things here are finally falling into place.

After a long and frustrating search for housing, I finally have a place to live. Work started on Wednesday the 1 and I have a schedule set up for that.

Finding housing in Madrid was one of the more frustrating things about coming here. (I can't decide if the visa process or the housing process was the lesser evil.) I mainly used the online site www.loquo.com for my search. There is a classified paper called the Segundo Mano, but after paying 2.20 euro for it and calling all the availaiblabe options only to be told that they had already filled the room, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Loquo is basically like a Spanish version of Craigslist. There are some other sites out there like www.campusanuncios.com or www.habitamos.com, but none of these were updated as frequently as Loquo. I was looking for housing in the Chamberi area which is by the metro stations Arguelles and Moncloa so that I can take the from the terminal in Moncloa to Moral.

This is a link that shows all the districts in Madrid Capital. The following image is in the Google Maps view of the area I was looking for housing.


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The problem with ads for rooms is that some people are very detailed and some people are not. I saw ads with a description of the future roommate that one girl was looking for and I also saw the 'room in arguelles. 400euro. call....' Some people would get annoyed when I said I was just going to be renting until the end of June, but they didn't say anything on their ads. I went to see various places and they all had one thing about them that I wasn't too fond of. I went to see a room in a Women's only residence. It would have been like living at Scripps if we had a dorm mom present ALL the time. It had shared bathrooms and shared kitchen space where I would have had to keep my food in my room until I wanted to use it. I looked at places where the husband and wife rented out rooms, but they felt too claustrophobic and I wouldn't be able to have people over. One place was a really nice room with a bunch (7) other young people from various Spanish speaking countries, but they ALL smoked. In another room one of the other flatmates smoked in her room and I couldn't smell it in the room I was to have, but I could smell it in the common area. Usually, the main problem was that I couldn't have visitors (one mother would have charged me to have visitors, 20 for a friend and 10 for a family member to spend the night...) or it was too expensive, or another thing that happened was that I found a great place with two really nice Spanish girls, but they said that they had forgotten to put on their ad that the place wasn't available until November. Whoops. This whole time I was living with friends from my study abroad program who are in the same program and who had gotten into Madrid earlier than I had. Even though they said it was no problem to stay with them, I felt bad and in a rush to get out.

At orientation I met two girls from Pleasanton and one was looking for housing in the same place that I was so we tried looking for a piso (apartment) together. This yielded worse results than trying to find a single room. I was also grasping at whoever else posted something about housing on the Facebook group that was made for our program. By the time I found this room, I had been up and down this one street, Andres Mellado about 5 or 6 times looking at different places. One of the pluses of going to see lots of places was that I learned to ask more questions to get what I wanted.

When I found this room I was worried because I couldn't get to see it until 1030 at night and then I had trouble with the address, but its a good thing I tried the buzzers anyway. I was so tired that I must have appeared very addled and confused. They told me that they would call me back later in the evening because they were going to see some other people and then they were going to decide who they liked the best. It was like going to an interview! on and off day! It was very nerve racking because if I didn't get the room then I would have to search all over again. Luckily for me, I did get the room.

My room is in a shared piso with two Spaniards, Jorge and Macarena. They work and study. They are both very nice and keep telling me to ask if I need anything. Jorge has been explaining to me how the place works and how they do things. My room is a good size (pictures to follow soon) and there is a kitchen and a bathroom. There is a small common area with a tv and I've come to figure out that they usually eat there. Jorge was saying that it is a rare occurrence for all of the housemates to be in the piso at the same time, so that explains why they don't need a large common area. The kitchen has no microwave, but it has a dishwasher and a clothes washer and a stove and an oven. I have wifi here. The only downside is that there is construction on the street, but hopefully I will be up or needing to get up by the time they start. The area is full of shops and supermarkets and bakeries so I'm happy and its a 5-10 min walk to the bus station. I have spent the last few days arranging my room and buying things like sheets and pillows and food and permanent toiletries.

The next items of business are to get used to my schedule at school, find a gym, a pool, and get a bank account and an ID card.