My first priority upon arriving in Paris, after seeing the Eiffel Tower of course, was to find permanent housing. For whatever reason, this wasn’t a huge concern of mine in the beginning. I had booked my first five nights in a hotel, and had the next ten nights secured in a hostel booked by MICEFA, my exchange program.
Hotel Beaunier, not too shabby for 45 euro a night
Hostel for Canadian students where I stayed. They were so nice that they let us Americans stay there too
Space shared in the hostel with my awesome roommate Imani!
I had planned on living with my friends Cali and Victoria, also from Brooklyn College and studying with MICEFA. After a few days exploring Paris, it was time to get serious. The three of us headed to the MICEFA building to peruse their binders full of apartment listings that were suitable for students. We lucked out in that we had all arrived early, and were the first students to have access to the listings. I didn’t realize until later just how much of a blessing that was.
We sat down with a few of the program coordinators and explained what we were looking for: a small one or two bedroom, where Cali and Victoria would be sharing a bed, and I would likely sleep on a fold out couch or obtain a cheap bed of some kind. We were straight up told by our school system’s advisor herself, that the three of us living together would never happen, and that in her years of working with finding housing for students it essentially never works out.
We were a bit discouraged, but nonetheless persisted, writing down contact information for almost every one bedroom that sounded spacious enough, and every two bedroom in our price range. We were there for hours, from around 11am until 5pm, stopping of course for lunch in the middle as is the Parisian way. The coordinator was nice enough to help us call places for us, but because this was still August, many proprietors did not answer as they were away on holiday.
Eventually, we managed to get an apartment tour for that evening. It ended up being a room in an older woman’s apartment, with two single beds and a shared kitchen and bathroom. Definitely not what the three of us were looking for, and not exactly what my friends had in mind either if they were to share the space.
At this point, it became pretty clear to us that the three of us splitting a single space was likely not going to happen. And because their priority was more about cost rather than comfort, and they had budgeted for splitting a room, it was apparent that I was the one that needed to split off and find my own place.
I was very overwhelmed by this idea, because I hadn’t planned for living alone. This idea had never even crossed my mind as a possibility unless I were in dorms. Not only have I never lived alone before, I have certainly never done so in a foreign country. I needed time to process this notion, but knew at the same time that time was of the essence.
For whatever reason, I ended up being the one making phone calls to our remaining list of landlords. I don’t like talking on the phone in English, and doing so in French on the subject of something so important was absolutely terrifying to me. It is hard enough to communicate in French in person, but over the phone and with traffic in the background was extremely difficult.
It seemed that everyone was busy, on vacation, or no longer had any housing to offer. After a long day with little to show for it, we agreed to go home and email any places that looked promising and meet up at MICEFA again the following day.
We looked through the binders again with our new parameters in mind, and now added Craigslist, dorms, and various Parisian housing websites to our search. It was very frustrating, looking through the same ads over and over. It wasn’t exciting anymore, just desperate. I finally found a studio that looked promising and managed to set up a meeting with the landlady.
And I’m so happy I did. Please see my next post for why 😀
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