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A Place to Stay

On Wednesday my parents and I drove up to Guelph and found me a room. Yeah, I didn't think it would be so quick and easy, although I did settle on the second place I saw. I'm going to be living in a room that's on the second floor of a house owned by a single mother who's been renting out rooms to students for 16 years.

Pros:

• The room is a pretty decent size and is already fully furnished
• I get the room to myself
• Internet is available, although I have to set it up myself

• It's about a 20-minute walk away from the campus, but there are busses going back and forth right outside my door

• The owner, who lives in another part of the house, is super friendly and seems really laid-back. Her name is Jeannette.

Cons:

• The bathrooms aren't the greatest. I've got one right outside my door that I'll be sharing with, I think, 2 other people, maybe 3. That's not bad, but the catch is there's no shower in that one.
• The shower is in a bathroom located in the basement in the far corner - in other words, as far away from my room as it could possibly be while still being in the same house. And I have to share it with 4 of the 5 other people living there. And there are obstacles...
• Because my landlady runs a daycare out of her basement, where the shower is. She tells me that parents start dropping their kids off at the basement entrance around 7am. The basement is usually occupied by about 10 or 12 little rascals at any given time during the day.

• There is no lock on my door.

I'd rather not interact with little kids every day. (It's not that I don't love kids, but I didn't decide to go live away from home so I could be around them every day.) And there's no way I'm going to start getting up at 6:30am every morning to shower - so I've decided that I'll have my showers in the evening, probably sometime between 9:30 and 10:30, when the basement isn't full of rugrats and, hopefully, when there aren't a bunch of people also trying to get washed.

One pro/con that I didn't mention is that with this place that's quite separate from the University atmosphere, I'll always be guaranteed a quiet, study-friendly atmosphere. The trouble is, I'm a sociable guy. I want to party sometimes too. Due to my inexperience, I guess I can't really draw any conclusions. I just hope I'm not too far out to lunch as far as all the cool stuff going on on campus that people in residence will constantly be right in the thick of.

Anyway, right now I'm more excited than anything else. And my birthday's in eight days, so that's something else I've got to look forward to as well. Crossing my fingers and thinking of one of these.

posted by Dave @ 7:17 PM