Out. Of. Time.

Countdown: 15 days left.

Wake up. Check email for responses. Still nothing. Sigh. Check Snapchat instead. Stomach growls. Maybe it’s time to eat. Put the phone down and make yourself a quick breakfast. Start the search again for apartments. Two hours pass. Can’t do this anymore. Take a break and watch some YouTube videos. Hmm it seems like a nice day. Time to go outside. Come back after a nice stroll. Start the search again while eating dinner. No new options from earlier. Guess we’ll try again tomorrow morning. Oh wait you have that meeting all day tomorrow. You can try once you get home.

13 days left.

Do some minor searching on the websites. Get stressed out. Decide that distracting yourself will be more useful to your mental health. Watch some shows. Check the calendar. Wow, the days are going by quickly. Wasn’t it just October 4th when you moved in? Stop daydreaming. You have a lot to do. Your apartment isn’t going to come knocking on your door.

12 days left.

Make some phone calls. Leave some messages. Set up some meetings. All of the meetings are for next week or the weekend. Not what you were hoping for but it’ll do. Talk to mom. She reminds you of the date. You know the date. Talk to dad. He asks if you’ve found anything yet. Still nothing but there’s a visit scheduled for tomorrow for an apartment that looks promising. Don’t get your hopes up. Go home. Start the search again. Send more requests for more information. Remember to call in the morning. Close your computer and sleep. Your eyes burn from staring at the screen for so long.

11 days left.

Visit apartment. Fall in love. Give the agent your file. He says you’ll hear by Monday because the owner wants to meet a few people to make a decision. A decent amount of people have seen the apartment but he makes it sound like your only competition is one other potential tenant. Call parents. Tell them about the great apartment you’ve seen. Go home. Decide to take a night off from looking because hopefully, this apartment will work out. Plan your lessons for the upcoming week. Wow, planning to teach a seminar alone is a lot of work.

8 days left.

Go to work. Check your phone to see if you have any messages. Nothing. Stay hopeful. It’s early in the day. Talk to parents. They ask if you’ve heard from the agent. Not yet, but it’s not the end of the business day. Then it’s the end of the business day. Panic slightly, but decide to call in the morning. Check a few listings just in case. Maybe he just forgot to call you back. Stay up late working on your lesson plans. These teenagers better appreciate the work you put into making the lessons fun.

7 days left.

Wake up. Go to work. Check phone on break. Still nothing. No time to look for anything now. Call when you leave work. No answer. Leave a message. Talk to parents. They want to know what you’re going to do. You don’t know what you’re going to do. Go home. Plan more lessons. Search more sites. Make more phone calls. You might be able to find something if you keep searching. Go to bed. You can’t stay up all night when you have to work at 8am.

6 days left.

Have a long day at work. Teenagers suck and don’t like to participate. Try hard to connect with them anyway. The agent finally calls you back to tell you that the owner went with someone else. Couldn’t he have said that before now? You’ve lost so many days hoping that this would work out and now you have to make up for lost time. Never do that again. Plan lessons. Search sites. Call numbers on listings. Repeat. Sleep.

5 days left.

Wonder, “Why are there so many listings that are still up if the apartments aren’t available? Can someone call me back?” Guess not. Receive an offer from your mentor to stay with her if you can’t find something. Keep trying to find something. Begin to start counting how many homeless people you see on the streets. Why are there so many in Paris? Imagine yourself being homeless with all of your bags. You can’t be homeless with all of your bags; there’s no way to keep moving with them all, which seems like an essential skill for the homeless. Relax, you have money saved. You won’t be on the street.

4 days left.

Panic. Realize how tired you are from this week. Think about crying because you’re so overwhelmed but realize the more time you spend feeling sorry for yourself, the less time you have to find a solution. Find a solution. Keep searching the thousand and one websites for housing in Paris. Make some appointments. Crap, the earliest appointment you make isn’t until the day you have to move out. Keep searching. You’re bound to find something.

3 days left.

Same story. Airbnb is expensive and how to you rent it for an indefinite amount of time? Tell parents you might take your mentor up on her offer. It’ll save you some money and it might not be a terrible idea.

2 days left.

Suck up your pride and call mentor to ask if it’s okay if you can stay with her for a few days. It’s okay. You can’t stay there forever so search for some more options. Don’t find many but you’re looking and that’s better than nothing.

1 day left.

Pack apartment. Search more sites for more listings. Clean. Search some more. Take a break. This is exhausting. See how long it’ll take you to get to your mentor’s house tomorrow by Uber. Thank god for Uber in Paris. You can’t manage these bags on the metro on your own.

Time’s up.

Well, I guess I really am homeless now. 

*This post reflects the two weeks of my life leading up to November 1st, 2016—the day my sublease ended. The lease of the person from whom I was renting ended on this date, so I had no choice but to move. Not reflected are the hours, days, weeks, and months I spent searching before these final two weeks with no success. The last two weeks were especially trying, as I had to balance planning and teaching a 15-hour intensive English seminar by myself as well as searching for housing which truly is a full time job (at least in Paris). 

After I moved out of my first place, I stayed with my mentor for 3 days and then with a family friend for another 11 days. I must add how grateful I am for the hospitality I received during my time of need. While I definitely could’ve just paid for a hotel room or accommodation through a site like Airbnb, that gets expensive and I already needed to have a large amount of disposable income to pay my security deposit, first month’s rent, (potential) agency fees, etc. Luckily, I was able to find an apartment through one of my coworkers who is so graciously renting one of her properties to me. 

All in all, I probably saw around 20 apartments (I stopped counting after a while and honestly, I don’t care to remember the exact number), before I found the one I’m in now. I heard this number isn’t even a lot compared to how much the average person sees in Paris. It’s ridiculous.

Someone asked what I think the reason is that I couldn’t find something and I honestly can’t tell you. I never got the chance to ask most people why they didn’t accept me because they wouldn’t return my calls or respond to my emails once they decided on a new tenant. These landlords are experts at ghosting; I hope this doesn’t carry over into their love lives. 

Anyway, I think it was a mixture of the length of my short stay in Paris (right now, it’s probably only going to be 9 months maximum and most people want a tenant for at least a year) and the fact that I had no French person who could guarantee my rent would be paid. My parents in the States offered to do so, but nobody wanted their American money.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Right now, I just thank God that the search is over because I’m not sure how strong I would’ve been come December and I was still searching for an option. I’m pretty tough but every person has a breaking point. You live and you learn though, right?