Week 2:
a) During my six months here, I’m renting a room in an elderly woman’s apartment. She has three spare bedrooms and rents them out exclusively to students, so I have two roommates that are in French college. The apartment is beautiful — it’s in a Haussmann style building and is classic Parisian. There’s a spacious living room with big windows and my bedroom overlooks a courtyard. I’m very lucky to have found this living situation — my other options would have been renting a studio. The apartment is between two big squares in the 16th arrondissement of Paris — Place du Trocadéro and Place de Mexico. The neighborhood is beautiful, but it’s quite calm and way too expensive for me to eat out. However, there are tons of great stores, take-out restaurants, bakeries and markets near my house.
b) Honestly, it has been quite difficult to meet students my age. For the first three weeks, I was the only intern at the office, and even now, we only have about five or six in the whole embassy. Originally, there were supposed to be more interns and some French ones, but there is a new law in France that interns can’t work more than two months unpaid, so many people aren’t allowed to participate in an internship here anymore. My roommates are great, but they’re quite busy and we’ve only hung out a few times. I’m hoping to meet more kids soon, though, by going to meetup.com events and through getting to know my roommates better. Luckily, I also have some family friends that live here, who will hopefully introduce me to friends of theirs, too!
Week 3:
a) For my cell phone, I brought my iPhone from home and bought a French SIM card from the carrier Orange. Thankfully, my friends that live here added me to their plan to make things easier for me. Otherwise, I couldn’t have gotten the plan and would have had to keep buying credit as my phone would run out. It’s 20€ per month and includes 4G coverage, unlimited texting, calling and 3 GB of data. Cell phones are such a bargain here compared to in the US!
At my apartment, all I have is my laptop and internet, but everything else I could possibly need in terms of technology is available at my office.
