Finding an Apartment

Imagine living in a dorm room with a bunk bed, bathroom and small kitchen.  Now imagine you're 30, and you live in this room with your husband.

Our apartment is 16 square meters, which is about 172 square feet.  Actually, it's not the smallest apartment that we've seen.  When we tell people back home about our apartment, they wonder why on earth we live here.  There are two reasons.  The first: we can walk to Notre Dame and the Louvre.  For that, I would live in a smaller apartment.  We might not ever live in as amazing a neighborhood in all our lives,  so we're happy to live in a small box just to be here. 

The second reason for our tiny apartment is a bit more practical.  Imagine trying to find a low priced, fantastically located apartment in Manhattan. Not so easy.  Now do it in French! 

When Matt and I first arrived in France on September 26,  we couldn't understand most of what people were saying.  Unfortunately, this caused problems when people were saying these things to us.  It's not that we hadn't studied the language, but lessons are a controlled environment.  There are ten to twenty new words, and the rest are already mastered points of grammar.  Unfortunately, on arrival in France, no one needs you to recite a grocery list or describe your wardrobe.  They need you to sign an apartment lease, open a bank account, fill out emigration papers and so on.  Countless times, I mentally thanked our Tampa-based French teacher Tina for teaching us the basics of apartment vocabulary - without her, we could have ended up with an apartment sans wc (without a toilet - yes, these apartments exist).  Within days of arriving in France, we needed to call people and ask to see their listed apartment.  This was, nine out of ten times, a disaster.  We would write out what we wanted to say and hope that the person on the other end of the line would respond the way that we anticipated they would, because we had no way of understanding what they were actually saying. 

This is the conversation we always hoped for:

Me: Hello, I found your ad on Craigslist for an apartment.  If it's still available, could we come see it?
Landlord: Yes, it's still available.  Can you come tomorrow at 11:00?
Me: Yes!  What is the exact address?
LL: 8 rue du Temple.  That's on Metro Temple.
Me: Great, thank you! See you tomorrow at 11!
LL: Ok, see you then!

This is a representation of the conversations that we usually ended up having instead:

Me: Hello, I found your ad on Craigslist for an apartment.  If it's still available, could we come see it?
LL: What? Who is this?
Me (mildly panicked): Hello.  I found your ad on Craigslist for an apartment?  If it's still available, could we come see it?
LL: No, I already rented it.
Me: Can we come see it tomorrow?
LL: No, it's already rented out, how did you get this number?
Me: Ok, could we come see it tomorrow?
LL: No! It's already rented!
Me: (Still not understanding, but noticing that the person on the other end of the line seemed angry) Ummmmm..........errrrr........................ Okay, thanks! BYE!!!!!!!!!!! (hang up in terror)

Thankfully, we eventually found an apartment using the internet, because the phone is still a disaster.