Housing Pain

So it's been a week since I left home for school.  What a week it's been.  Admittedly, the first few days went completely as planned.  We arrived at Diana's in time for dinner Monday night, and stayed there through Tuesday night, getting in dental appointments while we were there.  Ah, the dentist.  

The adventure truly started when we got to Salt Lake.  We drove down on Wednesday, heading straight to the place we had picked online for me to be living.  From outside, it seemed charming, and looked to be in a fairly typical neighborhood, like any neighborhood you see in Provo, actually.  No one was there when we got there, and while we were waiting for the owner to meet us, we happened to see one of the other girls get home.  She let us in and showed us where I would be staying.  

What can I say about what we found?  Well, we went immediately up to the room I'd be in, and found that it was a small room in the attic, with my bed in the dormer window, which could be kind of fun, but there was also another girl in the tiny room, and only one VERY small closet.  We were then told that the bathrooms were both on the second floor, and that I'd be in the larger one.  We went down to investigate.  Unfortunately, the only doors from the hall opened into bedrooms.  You had to go THROUGH one of the bedrooms to get to a bathroom.  OK...so we headed downstairs.  There WAS a bathroom on the main floor, well, a half bath anyway...at least I wouldn't have to wake anyone up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom...I'd just have to risk two flights of stairs in the dark.  Which would have been dangerous for me, apparently, since I managed to fall down the stairs the first time I went down them...almost taking out mom in the process.  I still have the bruises.

To top it all off, the lack of storage room for all the residents made for a rather...chaotic atmosphere.  Since there wasn't anywhere to put things, it all seemed to end up on the floor in various states of messiness.  Mom described it as saying it looked like a hurricane had blown through.  That might not have been too inaccurate.  Although it was dryer than a hurricane would leave things.  Suffice it to say, we decided that we would have to find me somewhere else to stay.

That was Wednesday, and I won't bore you with the details of the hunt, but let me just say that living in the Plaza hotel with a bunch of freshman girls was looking mighty good.  We found a few apartments that I could live in, but they would be unfurnished and I would be living alone...not to mention that they were at least twice as much as I would have been paying at the original place.

In the meantime, we had gotten a call from Joannie, and it turns out she had left some clothes at her friend Joe's house that she had just gotten back from visiting in the area.  We gave him a call and decided to meet up by the Ikea.  When he heard of our predicament, he looked through our selection of housing and told us that I shouldn't live at any of them.  That was discouraging, but he HAD been a fireman in Salt Lake, so he would have seen what happened in these areas.  He was very helpful, but we were pretty much back at page one.

Eventually, we found the bulletin board at the school, and called people looking for roommates.  It was here we found the PERFECT place.  I'm living in a high-rise apartment building in a nice part of the city.  I have my own room and bathroom, and the best roommates I could have hoped for.  The rent is only slightly higher than what I was going to be paying at the scary place, and EVERYTHING I need is within walking distance, or along the Trax line, which is only a block away.  The only catch is that the LDSBC ward that I would go to starts at 9, and Trax wouldn't be able to get me there til nearly 10.  This week I went with my roommates to their ward, which is definitely an option, but I still feel like I should check out the ward for my school, so I'll look into finding a ride.

Whew, I'll leave it at this for today.