I can has apartment?

It's been a while since I last posted, so there's some catchup to do, but I want to start by telling today's story.  I have been trying to get an apartment all week, and have kept running into either apartments being given away already (such as the one from the previous post), apartments that are crappy or in crappy neighborhoods, or land lords that want to scam me by making me pay interest to them on a large sum of cash every month (this is actually a popular practice in Madrid among some landlords called  a bank guarantee, that my coworkers told me to avoid like the plague).  I finally found an awesome place, and was waiting until Saturday for them to decide which of the dozen people interested in the apartment would get it.  Unfortunately, they did not pick me.

This left me rather depressed and totally destroyed my motivation to put up with the hostel any longer.  I haven't had a good night's sleep in ten days because of the noise, and there is so much cigarette smoke that I was beginning to get permanently nauseous.  I was able to put up with this by convincing myself that it was always for "just one more day," but the news about the apartment devastated my willpower.  Sanel was concerned about me and told me to go to a hotel for a little while.  So, this morning I came to a hotel and signed up for two nights.  It was like a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively.

The other thing I did on Saturday was send out about twenty e-mails to various apartments that looked decent in hopes of finding one soon.  Saturday night I got a response from one of the landlords, and promptly told him that I would like to see the apartment.  He agreed to let me see this apartment today at 6pm.  One thing that should be noted is that until now Ines has done all of the talking with landlords.  My Spanish is certainly not good enough for a telephone call.  So, I tried to contact these landlords by e-mail and used Google Translate to write the first e-mail, and then the subsequent e-mails to this landlord.  When I asked him a few e-mails later if his brother (who would be showing me the apartment) spoke any English, his response was (in Spanish), "I don't think English will be a problem because your Castilian is great."  I tried to tell him that I can write fine Spanish while I have the internet, but that I am awful at speaking it, but this did not concern him, and somehow that issue was brushed under the rug.  So, I went to see the apartment today after writing about a dozen phrases down in my iPhone and hoping they would be patient with me.  Fortunately, the brother's wife spoke great English and was willing to speak in it with me.

Another fortunate thing is that the apartment was amazing.  It is a beautiful two-bedroom flat with A/C, a brand new kitchen / bathroom, and a big master bedroom.  It's one of the cheapest rent's I've found, and it's in a beautiful quiet neighborhood within a short walk to all the stores I will need on a day-to-day basis.  The apartment is no more than a two minute walk from the metro station, and a bus stop that goes directly to my work.  Most importantly, it's not being sought by anyone else right now, so I was able to ask for it without being put on a waiting list and having my heart broken again.  I sign the contract tomorrow!!  Here are some pictures of my 750 euro/month (which do not do it justice):

Actually the internet is uber slow in my hotel, so I will just give you all the link rather than repost all of them because I did not take my own this time...

http://www.idealista.com/pagina/inmueble-fotos;jsessionid=6B65DA5F59998E68F0E00F235C459D2F.acaps5?itemOrder=1&codigoinmueble=VW0000002342644

In other news:

Last Sunday I tried to find my University as per my mom's recommendation.  This was a very good recommendation because while Google Maps told me it was in the center of Madrid, when I got there there was no University.  I then went to a Starbucks and used their internet to go to the University's webpage, only to find that in fact the University is about a forty minute train ride outside the city. When I got there I found a locked security gate and no one answered, probably because everything here shuts down on Sundays, and this was a Sunday before school started.  Google Maps told me there was another entrance, which was the main entrance for the entire school, so I tried to go that way.  The "road" Google took me down at one point disappeared under a ten-foot high pile of dirt that stretched down the road for about 100 meters, I decided I would keep going to the entrance anyways rather than turn around.  I was soon stopped by a security guard that said lots of things in Spanish I do not know, but his pointing made me realize he wanted me to go away, and so I did.

The rest of the week was spent getting set up at work and looking for apartments.  I saw about ten throughout the week, but none other than the heart-breakers really impressed me.  I also made an appointment to get my NIE card this Tuesday, which I'm excited about because I can't get a phone contract or a real bank account until I have it.  So far I'm really enjoying work and my coworkers are incredibly nice and sociable.  I'm looking forward to working here for the next four years with all of them.