Week 5

By Joni

Lost in Translation: Looking for apartments can be exhausting and frustrating in any language, but it is especially so in a language that's not your first. It turns out that September 1st is the most competitive time of the year to find an apartment, so we have now spent about 6 whole days doing nothing but trying to find a place to live with minimal success. We have a spreadsheet to keep track of the many attempts at finding a home where we document the link to the ad, phone number of the contact, how I contacted the person, the address, and any notes. So far, I have either called, emailed, or sent a Whatsapp message to more than 50 different people, most of whom only speak Spanish. This has provided us with many interesting experiences.

First of all, our host-mom's housekeeper, Rosie, is really determined to help us find a place to live. She is from the Dominican Republic, and I am just not very good at understanding her accent, so communication is difficult. Last Thursday, she told me to meet her at a certain building at 4:30 so we could look at a place together. When we arrived, Aaron and I didn't see Rosie, just the guy working the front desk.  I tried my best to explain the situation, but he insisted on taking us up to look at a studio, even though Rosie was not yet there. The room was not at all what we are looking for - it was tiny, dark, dirty, and the kitchen consisted of a microwave and a mini-fridge. I thought for sure this man had arranged to show this apartment to someone else and mistook us for them. Rosie then arrived and spoke to the man for a bit and they tried to tell us something, but they both kept speaking so quickly that I could not understand. Finally they recruited a man on his way out the door to come speak to us in English, and we arranged to meet the same man in one hour at a different apartment building. We did, and it was not quite as bad as the first, but still not great. I told him we prefer to have a kitchen with an oven in it and he told me he has no apartments with ovens, so we parted ways. I thought this man was perhaps Rosie's friend, but then she continued to send me pictures of phone numbers posted outside of different apartment buildings advertising rentals. We later decided that Rosie doesn't know this man, she just was trying really hard to help us find a place to live. Fun fact: 4 days later we saw this man on the metro, not near the apartment buildings. 

Wednesday morning, in the midst of my many phone calls, I received a call from a Spanish number.  I had a brief moment of excitement thinking that someone was contacting me to arrange a viewing of an apartment. The man on the other end said hello, then I jumped right in and started asking him when my husband and I can come see his apartment that is for rent. He seemed very confused and kept saying something to me that I couldn't quite make out over the loud sound of sheep baa-ing in the background. I eventually figured out that the whole time he had been telling me he doesn't have an apartment to rent, but yet he seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I finally ended the call with an apology, but not quite sure what for because he called me...

Wednesday evening, after the longest, most devastating day of apartment searching, I received another phone call, this time from a woman named Consuela. She began the conversation by saying something about an apartment, so I again jumped right in with my script about how my husband and I would like to come see the apartment. As she's talking, I'm racking my brain and searching our spreadsheet for any record of speaking with a Consuela so I have some frame of reference for the conversation, but she just keeps asking me what I want in an apartment, so I thought maybe she has a couple different apartments for rent and needs to know which one I like, so I told her we were looking for a one-bedroom apartment. She still kept asking questions, so then I figured this must be a person with a couple rooms for rent in a shared flat, and she needs to know which room I prefer. I then asked her if the room is available for a couple, and she said yes. I shared the dates for which we need the apartment and we exchanged email addresses. I kept asking her when we could come see the apartment, and then she said, "which neighborhood do you prefer?" With this question I became even more confused because suddenly it seemed like she didn't actually have an apartment for rent, she just wanted to help me find what I was looking for, so I asked her about it, and that was exactly it. She said she will look for our preferences, then call me when she finds something. I hung up the phone and immediately searched all of my emails, recent phone calls and messages, as well as looked extensively at our spreadsheet and the online posts on Idealista from that day. No where could I find any record of the name Consuela, or the phone number she called from. I have no idea who she is, how she knew I was looking for an apartment, or how she got my phone number. 

Today we had an appointment with an agency to see two different apartments. After seeing the first, we thought we would walk with the realtor to the other place. He told us they were really busy today, so he couldn't take us to the other place, so we started heading to a different neighborhood to our next apartment viewing. On the way to the metro, I received a call from a different realtor from the same agency telling me he's at apartment #2, ready to show it to us. I hastily hung up the phone and started to head that way, then noticed what time it was and realized that we'd be late for the next viewing if we went to see apartment #2. I immediately called the man back to apologize and tell the man we wouldn't be able to meet him. Apparently I called the guy from apartment #1, however, so he was very confused. He told me his coworker would be showing us apartment #2. I explained that I didn't have the proper phone number for his coworker, so I asked him to call his coworker to tell him we didn't have time to meet him. 10 seconds later, we see him down the sidewalk on the phone, so I assume all is good. We metroed to the next neighborhood, and as we were walking to the viewing, I received a phone call from the apartment #2 guy telling me he sent a message with the address. It turns out his coworker never informed him we weren't coming, so he kept waiting and trying to call me because he thought we were lost. I felt so bad telling him we couldn't meet up with him, but agencies are expensive and we were pretty sure we weren't going to love the place.

*By the way, all of these conversations were in Spanish. And by that I mean whatever language I speak that slightly resembles Spanish.

Exploring the city:  With all the apartment searching, we saw a LOT of the city.  From the giant chess pieces in El Viso to the unexpected grandeur of the Príncipe Pío station (along with the large shopping area that most closely approximates an upscale shopping mall) there were several things to keep our spirits up and our minds focused on the incredible place in which we are trying to live.  Aaron enjoyed the opportunity to take the Cercanías (commuter train) for the first time to travel to a (too far away) housing option, as well as all the new metro stops we got to visit en route to various apartments.  We hope as the apartment search winds down we can cover a lot of ground and be more itinerant in our travels to places that are less fraught with anxious anticipation.

Príncipe Pío Metro Station - there is a shopping mall here!

We happened upon this giant chess set on our way to view an apartment in El Viso.

Beautiful wall in the Nuevos Ministerios Metro Station.

Memorable meal: This past Saturday, Rosie made a chicken and rice dish with an incredibly tasty sauce.  A few of our college girl roommates brought up this meal later in the week, and said that they would happily eat it for the rest of their lives.  Teenage penchants for exaggeration aside, it was pretty dang phenomenal and I would certainly have it again and again! 

Since we've spent so much time out and about, we've taken the opportunity to try out some semi-quick, semi-cheap restaurants.  The food at Taco Bell in Spain is decent, though still not quite up to the standards of it's American cousins.  The decor, however, was far more contemplative and aesthetically pleasing than any fast food chain I've seen in the states.  There was a surfer theme and a bunch of retro pictures of the original Taco Bell in California. A less familiar chain that seems to be prevalent here is VIPS, a sort of mix between Denny's and TGI Fridays.  We went in to our local VIPS at 1 PM and received the breakfast menu (since the meal schedule is shifted, everything starts later!).  The croissant french toast was amazing, some of the best we've ever had, and was completely satisfying in it's taste and lack of "why did I just eat that" afterthought.

Spanish Taco Bell - they serve french fries, ice cream, and alcohol.

Who's coming to dinner: Our final week living with Marli didn't fail to provide several notable dinner guests.  We had two meals with some combination of the five girls with whom we had been living.  The first meal was a little tense, as we had spent five days with these girls without overlapping at a meal.  There were quite a range of personalities, from those totally uninterested in our existence to those who made polite small talk.  Shared meal number two was more comfortable, perhaps because only two girls joined us.  All of these girls go to Tulane University and are spending a semester studying in Madrid, and we're pretty sure they had no idea we were going to be living in their shared space for a week. That said, it was eye-opening to be among young people who are having a very different college experience than the one Aaron and I shared.  The high drama alone would have made for an entertaining year, but I think it's for the best that we avoided many of the pitfalls that would have entailed.  

Notably not at dinner this week was Marli herself.  Although she told us she would see us every day after moving out, we only encountered her twice in the past week and never did share another meal together.  As much as she may have confused us and/or kept us guessing, it was nice to eat dinner with a person who appeared to genuinely care about us.  Needless to say, dinner this week just didn't have the same vibe we had grown to appreciate with all the other guests in weeks passed.

En la clase: At long last, our TEFL certification course at TtMadrid is complete!  We finished the course with a mock interview, lunch with amazing classmates, and then a celebratory "graduation" ceremony! We really enjoyed our weeks studying at TtMadrid and will forever be grateful for all we've learned, and for all of the wonderful new friends we've made. We owe a huge thanks to the amazing teachers and staff at TtMadrid that made us feel at home in Madrid right away, and supported us before, during, and even still after the course.

Officially TEFL Certified!

The amazing August class at TtMadrid :)

Final note:  We are grateful to our amazing friends Ben and Cat for letting us crash at their place as we move out of our Gran Vía lodging and continue searching for an apartment.  Today went very well, and with any luck we will have a space to call our own in the next couple days!  There are currently two very strong contenders that seem to be ours for the taking...but in this city I don't think either of us will feel certain until we've actually moved in.  Will the Yosts forgo dreams of teaching English and pursue careers as toreros?  Will they give up on apartment hunting and take a trip to the Philippines?  Will the mysterious Consuela come through at the final hour with an unbelievable deal?  Tune in next week for another riveting episode of MadrileñYosts!

Search stats50+ apartments researched and contacted across 20 different neighborhoods
22 WhatsApp messages
21 phone calls
6 Idealista messages
4 Facebook messages
3 professional agencies contacted
2 potential options after a week of nonstop searching, pending final approval of renter
1 narrowly avoided scam

1 positive response to asking if a couple could rent a room in a shared flat

2 amazing friends who let us crash at their place when we are homeless+ More apartments that resulted in such quick denial that they didn't even make the chart

Goodbye, Gran Vía!