My Apartment à la France

Well, it's official. I have escaped the bowels of the FIAP hostel, and now when someone asks me, "Where are you living while in France?" I have an answer!

Here's how the housing process works at AUP: unlike most American universities, AUP doesn't have dorms. And remember, their "campus" is eight buildings hidden in the same general area near La Tour Eiffel, so there's nowhere to put a dormitory even if they wanted to have one! So if you choose to get your housing through AUP's Housing Office, you will live in one of two main options. Either an apartment of no particularly great size, or a room made into a kind of studio on the top floor of an apartment building that used to be the maid's quarters way back in the day (known as a chambre de bonne). You are assigned a housing appointment slot the first day of orientation, and at that appointment you tell the housing advisor what you're looking for, what area of Paris you think you might want to be in, your budget, etc. He or she gives you 3-5 options and you pick one to visit in person. If you like it, you take it. If not, you wait until everyone else has gone through the first round of housing and then start over.

I found my apartment on the second try, the first apartment I looked at being nice but unexpectedly unfurnished. Fortunately because I didn't have to wait for the second round of appointments since it wasn't that I didn't WANT the apartment for some reason, it's that I COULDN'T take the place without furniture. And it's a good thing I couldn't take the first place, as it turns out.

One other thing before I get to details on my apartment: word on the street is that more people in my family as well as friends outside of my family are following me here on this blog than I'd anticipated. Which is great, but I realized not everyone may know that I'm not actually studying abroad here alone. One of my closest friends from college, Brian, is also studying at AUP here with me this semester, and we're actually sharing an apartment. This actually turned out to be a very good decision, because living together combined our budgets and meant we could afford to get an EXTREMELY good place.

How good? Let me show you.

Our apartment is in the 8th arrondissement, the same one containing the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees. It's around the corner from a metro stop on the 7th (and top) floor of a building that fortunately has an elevator (which is rare in these kinds of buildings in Paris).

You walk in through our front door, and this is what you see:

This is our living room, with a very comfy couch (that also has a pull-out bed). Our utilities are not included in our rent, but cable tv and wireless internet access are (wifi was the number one thing Brian and I wanted our apartment to have). The two main doors on either side of the tv lead to the two bedrooms, while the door all the way on the left is our bathroom.

If you make a hard left at the couch, you will encounter:

Our kitchen! The white thing above our stove is actually our hot water heater (but it's not working at the moment and we have no hot water, which is a problem that is in the process of being fixed), and there's a fridge across from where the sink is.

That's the view of our living room from the other side. You can see our front door back there on the left, covered by a heavy curtain to cover up the fact that the door is gray and metal and covered in half a dozen locks. The white door on the left is just a closet, while the white door on the right is our toilet, which is separate from the rest of our bathroom. Although the inside of that door is rather cool looking, covered in what looks like mod-podged mini old school travel posters:

Brian's bedroom is one the right when you walk into our living room:

He also has a smaller two-seater couch on the other side of the door on the left.

Then my bedroom:

(I've since unpacked, I promise.) And I have a desk in my (slightly larger) room:

And while the view out of all those windows in my living room are just of the back of the other part of the building about 15-20 feet away, the view from my bedroom window is kind of cute:

Price tag? 1500 euros a month, 750/person (plus a little extra for our utilities). Based on what I hear from friends there are people at AUP living alone paying 750 euros/month for chambres de bonne or little studio apartments that are 1/4 the size of our two-bedroom. See what I mean about combining our budgets being a great decision? In addition, while it's often the case that even though there's furniture, you are responsible for your own sheets/towels/etc. But our apartment came with all of those things along with lots and lots of kitchen stuff. Our landlady, who lives below us and is adorable and so so SO nice, has a daughter who used to live here until she got married, so a lot of this stuff used to be hers. Although, I gotta say, it's kind of strange to think that I will only live in this cute little place for only a little over 100 days...