Like dating but worse.

I was showing people my room pretty much from when I arrived back 3 weeks ago, and this didn't only given me the opportunity to gain lots of Facebook friends in a bid to avoid the charges spare room websites try and put on you if you want to reply to your emails, but also to be emotionally traumatised.

Finding someone to take my room has just been filled with rejection, criticism, and people who never call back; just when I think I've finally found someone they tell me they're 'seeing other places' and I never hear from them again. And whilst this is obviously not a reflection on me at all (since they don't have to like me, because I won't be there), I found myself feeling genuinely hurt every time someone didn't want to rent the room.

Some people even said it was too expensive, which isn't a complaint I've had before.

That definitely made that worse rather than better.

One girl was actually mortified that the toilet wasn't in the bathroom, and yeah okay, so that's maybe a little less convenient than you would like (you could actually argue that it's more convenient, but whatever), but I'm not sure it would shock me as much as it appalled her.  It's not like the toilet is that far from everything else, it's on the same floor as the bathroom and kitchen, it's not even a yard from them in fact, it's literally the other side of the stairs. It's not like it's in a separate building, you don't have to walk for a mile through a forest to get there, you just make a decision to go right at the bottom of the stairs rather than left. Quite frankly I think that if you can't deal with that situation then you should seriously consider if you deserve to live in a house at all.

That was probably a bit too angry, so you can see what I mean, I became pretty emotionally invested.

But the most important thing is that I now have somewhere to go when the time comes for me to end my contract on Friday, well sort of, I intend to have somewhere to go and I should be going there. Although given my success so far the house will probably burn down between my visit tomorrow and my being made homeless on Friday. Or they'll find asbestos in it, or it will be the only house in Brussels to flood. Something.

So I can say goodbye to Rue de Chambery with it's far too numerous stairs and dingy kitchen and shower that won't stay hot for more than 20 minutes and weird serial killer-esque extra rooms that we weren't allowed in and door that I couldn't open with just one hand free. I can say hello to somewhere with probably just as many flaws and annoyances but with the bonus of not spending my time avoiding the owner of the house because most of what she says makes me want to be fluent in French just so she would understand how angry I am. So that will be nice at least.

And I think it's a good indicator of what the current owner of my house is like that how nice and relaxed about my signing/deposit paying the owner of my new place is being is causing me a great deal of suspicion.

Maybe the house is filled with asbestos.

Merde.

xx

I've been really bad at this lately.

I've just been crazy busy and I'm trying to move out of/find someone to move into my house - more to follow when I've actually sorted this out and have a new place to live. But at least it's the 16th , so we're officially half-way through the worst month of the year. I didn't think the 'January blues' were a thing, and then I got back here last week and discovered they were a thing, and I had them. There is of course, every possibility I was just home sick and in a horrible mood, but blaming the time of year is just easier.

And if anyone's looking for a room in Brussels let me know - because apparently this blog has also become a sales pitch.

Then it snowed. It looks great don't get me wrong, I like snow as much as the next person, but I've been running maybe 3 times since I got back here and now it's too dangerous for me to even walk. I'm very lucky in the fact that I get to work from home quite a lot at the moment so I don't have to risk my life walking to the office, but even a trip to the bank this morning took about 3 times longer than it should have; and to those people who saw me nearly fall on my face - I hope you enjoyed it, I really do. In all honesty everyone else probably isn't finding it this difficult to get around, but I'm not that stable as it is, I'm not really expecting to make it out of January in one piece.

And yes, I know the picture of the snow isn't the most artistically brilliant one, but it's largely melted in the bits of Etterbeek that look nice because those are the bits where people move around a lot.

But in more positive news we went out on Saturday night and had probably the best night out since we got here (I say this a lot, I know, but it's for real this time) - I've really fallen back in love with going out since moving here, thanks Brussels.

This is another really short and uninformative one, I swear I'll be better at this once I've stopped showing people round my house every day/worrying about being made homeless very swiftly. I'll also explain just how I got to the point of needing to move out in the first place, I promise.

So I'm gonna take some time here to recommend some other people Youtube/blog wise you might want to check out just because I feel like this post should be good for something at least.

Touchdemode.com - This girl can put an outfit together, and her site looks brilliant, check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/user/thatssojessicaful   - I hope she doesn't mind me putting this here, but sometimes I watch this girl's videos and I just feel like she's stolen my brain.

And if you follow @thirdyearabroad on Twitter they always re-tweet some pretty good stuff from other people who've decided that moving once to go to university wasn't enough, and want to do it again 2 years later.

À bientôt!

xx

Happy New Year/I'm back

Today I’ve nearly been in Brussels for 4 whole months, and I’ve got 6 months left. I don’t know how that happened, and I’m pretty concerned that it means I probably don’t have an excuse not to know where things are anymore, and that my French should be far better than it is.

Okay so this is a bit late, apologies, but I hope you’ve had a good first week of 2013 and haven’t already given up on those New Year’s resolutions.

Usually when people ask me if I’ve made any I just reply with ‘get my shit together’, which I like because it allows me plenty of scope, and because it’s an ongoing process and will clearly take longer than 12 months no one can say I haven’t achieved it.

I very rarely make proper ones however, for the same reason I never made revision timetables, or set myself deadlines, or planned my essays properly. Just because I ignore myself and because I can’t shake the knowledge that there aren’t actually any consequences if I don’t keep my promises to myself. That maybe doesn’t apply to the essay planning one; I think that’s more stubbornness, and I’ve gotten a bit better at it, but not much. We’ll see how serious that one actually is when I fail my degree.

But my actual New Year’s resolutions, although I only thought of them in the past few days, are as follows:

1. Stop pretending you don’t need glasses – i.e. stop never taking them anywhere and then just telling everyone that you can’t read things like signs and bus timetables. Just take your glasses with you and actually be able to see.

I have no idea why I do this in the first place but since I moved out here I don’t think my glasses have moved from my desk. I certainly didn’t take them home with me, so I’ve just spent the last three weeks repeating the phrase ‘I haven’t got my glasses on so I can’t see’.

2. Stop looking at things that you know will annoy you – I’m not really sure why I do this either, and I mean this one actually makes no sense, I don’t know why I hate myself so much that I feel the need to irritate myself on purpose.

So I’m going to stop following people on Twitter when I know everything they say annoys me, and I’ve definitely hidden a few people’s updates from Facebook in the last couple of days.  I guess you just like some people better if you never have to hear what they have to say.

I’m also going to stop looking at any links anyone posts to anything from the Daily Mail/The Sun online; because then I really do only have myself to blame.

3. Find a way to clean your laptop screen/underneath the keyboard – it’s pretty bad. I’ve tried to clean the screen a million times but whatever’s marking it is beyond the cleaning power of mere face wipes. I’m 99% sure it’s just coated in hairspray, making it 100% my fault.

I’m writing this on the train and the guy who was meant to be sat next to me all the way from Retford to London sat down for all of 10 minutes and then got up and left. That was about 40 minutes ago and I don’t think he’s coming back. The guy opposite me also just caught me looking over at his Uni notes trying to work out what he was doing, so that’s good. Maybe resolution number 4 should be get some social skills.

Au revoir!

xx