L'Auberge Espagnole

For those who asked, I'm feeling much better. It's just a cold, I just don't get colds very often and this one is taking its sweet time. But I'm almost back at 100% :)

Anyway... I had a little "interview" on Thursday, in which B. basically offered me the job, took me around to meet some people, and declared that they could probably keep me busy for close to four months - yippie! So then I set to work on housing. There is a website called gumtree.com.au that is basically like craigslist, and it had some really good-sounding ads on there. I went to see two places Thursday night. The first place was very nice but it took forever to get there during rush hour and is not walkable from work. It is just off a busy road and there is not much around, even in the way of roommates, and no common room. One of my goals for being here is not to sit in a room by myself with a tv, but rather to make friends so that even if I do sit at home (which I do a lot of - I'm kind of a homebody), I am at least learning something. Yes, I realize I would learn things from tv, but still. People trump tv nearly every time.

The second place I saw was much better in terms of my goals. If anyone has seen the movie "L'Auberge Espanole" it was just like that. The movie is about a French guy who moves to another country (I think Spain - I am totally going to butcher this synopsis but you can check imdb.com) for a year and moves in with a mishmash group of people from all over Europe and they have wacky adventures. When he goes to see the place and meet the roommates for the first time, he desperately wants them to pick him and to be their friend, and I felt exactly the same way (especially after the seeing the first apartment!) I really enjoyed everyone who was there and never wanted to leave - they "interviewed" me for about 3 hours, which was mostly just sitting around chatting. There are four roommates, two guys from Australia (one of whom is never around and wears all black and a Batman belt - I have no idea), one from Hungary (he's new too), and one girl from Japan (Eriko, we bonded over the koala cookies ;)). And it's in a really cool part of town, sounds like a lot of fun, and is in walking distance to work. I just moved in about 20 minutes ago and since most people are still asleep, I am taking advantage of the free internet and communal computer :)

The house itself is in hippie central, aka the West End, and reminds me of 318 Catherine, the house my friends and I lived in in college, so it immediately felt homey to me - in a certain dirty, hardwood floor kind of way. I'm not going to sugar-coat it, it's not the Ritz, it's $90 a week with no dryer because apparently "it never rains here," except it's raining today so there go my big laundry plans! Oh well.

Ok, I'm going to work on uploading those photos now. More later!