●英字新聞社ジャパンタイムズによる英語学習サイト。英語のニュース、英語教材、TOEIC、リスニング、英語の発音、ことわざ、などのコンテンツを無料で提供。
脚注を印刷
吹き出し表示
フレーム表示
U.S. Campus Life
A full house
A few weeks ago, I wrote that my roommates and I were in the process of looking for subletters for the months of July and August. Two of the four roommates in our apartment were breaking the lease and they needed to find replacements for just those two months. We all had to sift through the responses of people who had read the advertisements we had placed on various Internet bulletin boards, newsgroups and mailing lists. This was a lengthy process and we were starting to get nervous. July was coming up quickly and we still weren't sure who was going to be paying the rent.
I'm happy to say that we found subletters on time and they have proven to be a very good match. One of the rooms that was up for the summer is very large, so we decided to let a couple from Spain share it. I was a little bit nervous about letting them take the room, since it would mean that five people would be sharing the single bathroom in our apartment, not just four. Moreover, we decided to let them take the room in spite of our not being able to meet them until July 1, when they would be arriving from Spain. We sensed something very friendly and open through their e-mails and phone calls, and decided to give them a shot. Not only have these subletters quickly become friends with me and my other roommate, they have become friends with our friends, as well.
We found the other subletter through an Internet bulletin board that is open to the public. Originally, we had posted just on university sites, because we figured that we wanted to live with other graduate students. However, we soon realized that we would have to expand our horizon to get the best candidates. This subletter works downtown in the computer industry, has his own set of friends in Boston and tours with his swing band when he's free. This means that he's out of the house by 7 a.m. and doesn't come home until late in the evening and he's away most weekends, as well.
Given the high population density in our apartment due to the addition of the Spanish couple, it's been a blessing that he doesn't occupy the bathroom or kitchen during the day. I hate saying that this makes him the "ideal" subletter, since he's also a very laid-back and friendly guy whom I'd be happy to hang out with otherwise, but one of the reasons we chose him is because we knew that it would essentially be the same as having one fewer person in the apartment.
After we found the subletters, my remaining roommate and I switched gears and started looking around for new roommates for the fall. We started by asking our friends and acquaintances whether any of them wanted to live with us in the fall. It looked like we had quickly "decided" upon two people to live with us. However, in the end, neither of them were willing to commit to signing the lease. Since we had spent a good deal of time thinking that they would be joining us, we got a late start advertising to the public, and we basically had only a week to choose two new roommates before the deadline.
I posted on a BU Web site for matching roommates and got about 15 responses in one week. I met about 10 of the people who had responded. It was a stressful week, but in a sense, it was very interesting meeting all these candidates. They came from all over — New York, San Francisco, New Mexico, Canada — and they were all studying different things. I think it would have been interesting taking all these people and having a party. I probably would have been able to get along with any of them, but I liked one in particular, so I offered her one of the rooms.
At the last minute, my roommate and I decided to give the remaining room to the cousin of a good friend of ours. Our friend is from Turkey, and his cousin wouldn't be coming to the States until the fall. Even though we knew that we wouldn't be able to meet his cousin until she arrived here, we had a good feeling about the arrangement, and we decided to accept her in good faith.
Now, I have to turn down the people we could not take.