I'm not the only one complicating the housing situation here, though! A foreigner trying to find an apartment in Rio is one of the most difficult tasks you can imagine. I have lots of friends who have lived in different cities and countries all over the world and, although everyone has crazy stories, I have yet to hear of another city that makes it so difficult for foreigners to find a place to live.
Visas here are generally for 6 months maximum, so you can't really sign a year-long lease. Your only real option is to rent a room in someone else's apartment. That seems simple enough but people have the craziest rules here. Most of the places don't let you invite people over (or to sleep over); many places have rules about what and when you can and can't cook (ex: "You can't fry things."); the majority of the places are for girls-only so guys are even more screwed; some of the apartments have a rule that you can literally only sleep there ("You can't be here during the daytime on weekends, either."). All-too-many places make it seem like you're there as a favor, rather than because you're helping to pay the rent. They also don't take into consideration that you might be cool as hell and super fun to live with. The point is, even though it's 100% worth it, finding housing here is tough.
Don't believe me? Let me give you a brief overview of the places I've lived here.
1. That girl's apartment in Copacabana. Do you guys remember? She offered me her apartment because she was supposed to be leaving but she never actually did so we accidentally ended up spending a couple of months living together. She was really smart and interesting to talk to and we had a lot of fun at times. But her mom moved in with us at one point and that's when shit hit the fan. Three people in a one-person apartment is tough as it is. Her mom apparently became "jealous" of the time her daughter and I were spending together and began to treat me like shit. No joke. She spent her time cleaning like crazy, complaining about cleaning, cooking food, complaining about cooking, hating my existence, complaining about her daughter not wanting to spend time with her, complaining about her daughter's lifestyle, yelling at me for things I hadn't done "yet" like bringing sand into the house when I was about to go to the beach and yelling at me for giving any positive opinions of her daughter's life choices. It had started out really well but I had to find another place.
2. Largo do Machado - Nico, the jiu jitsu teacher I met while I was living in Cuzco, and I had become great friends by that point and his roommate had just moved out. I moved into his house where he lived with an 84-year-old woman, her son and his wife, and their son and his wife. Oh...and like 15 MMA fighters. Now that house was fun to live at. I had so much fun living with Nico, who truly became a brother to me, but the kitchen sometimes got so dirty that I literally couldn't use it so I wasn't necessarily upset when there were no rooms open when I came back from my four-month trip to the U.S.
My favorite memories from living there? Of course the time I spent with Nico and my precious 84-year-old friend...but probably when Chelsea and Raquel came to visit. The guys continuously stood in their window across from mine, flexing and trying to talk to Chelsea even though none of them spoke the same language. Those guys were hilarious. I still go back and visit sometimes even though my Nico isn't there anymore.
3. Tijuca - It was interesting to get to know another part of the city (it's in the North Zone rather than the South Zone where we foreigners typically spend our time). I spent a few months living there and absolutely loved the neighborhood and the other girls that lived there (there were usually about seven of us living there) but, omg, the family was annoying as shit.
It was a couple and their 6-year-old son. Sometimes the mom was fun to talk to and capable of being funny but she was also obnoxiously hypocritical. Though both she and her husband are extremely obese, she once asked me why I wasn't skinnier. She hung up notes around the house, passive aggressively telling us to do our dishes and turn off the lights when we left rooms, though she didn't abide by these rules, herself. Her family was louder than hell but expected us to be quiet.
One particular night, I was giving an English class for two of my friends. This was something we did weekly and that we'd gotten permission from the family to do before we ever started. Normally there were more people but almost everyone was busy that night. The three of us were talking, laughing and studying and having a good time. Normally, the family was wide awake at that hour (they usually went to bed around 1:00 or 2:00--6-year-old boy included) and it was only 10:30. Out of nowhere though, our whale of a landlord--the woman's husband--came banging on our door, swung it open, and yelled "Shannon, you said 10:00, right? Yeah! It's 10:30!!" and slammed the door on his way out again. The three of us sat there dumbfounded. What the hell did I say I was gonna do at 10:00?? Did I leave clothes in the washing machine? Did I forget to pay my rent? Was I supposed to talk to them about something? No. I was super confused.
We assumed he must've meant that our class was supposed to end at 10:00 but we ended at 11:00 every week and he was always there so he should know that. If they were going to bed three hours earlier than usual, he should've let us know. He should also know, as a grown man, how to make eye contact and use his words and inside voice to talk to people when he has some sort of issue. No one from the class wanted to come back again but, luckily, I was moving out just a week or so later.
4. I was waiting for a spot to open for me in an apartment in Copacabana so I moved into a "republica" (same deal as my house in Largo do Machado--it's sort of a mix between a hostel and a house) in Botafogo. It was a short--but strange--stay. Just ask Erin. I skyped her multiple times while I was living there and she even got to meet some of my housemates--all of whom hit on her.
I don't even remember how many people were living there but there were a lot and I was one of just two girls and the other was never there. Given that it was a similar living situation as Largo do Machado, I expected the bathrooms and kitchens to be disgusting but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they weren't. There was a reason for that, though. The bathrooms often didn't have water. Sorry for this extra info for you, but I had to walk to the little shopping mall down the street to take a shit most days because I knew the toilet wasn't going to flush. Then the kitchen situation was even more interesting. The guy who lived there and taken all the dishes away, as well as the soap, because "people weren't washing their dishes." In my opinion, taking the soap was a bit counterproductive...but whatever.
So, even though I wasn't living with a crazy family anymore, it was a bit difficult to live in a house without fully functional bathrooms and kitchen. There was no shortage of craziness, either. Some of the guys were super nice, a lot minded their own business, some were a bit strange and then there was this one meathead.
Guys, I wish you all could meet him. He was a nice enough guy but he is definitely one of the dumbest people I've ever met. He's a personal trainer and all he does is work out, eat and take supplements. I am not joking you: I would be walking through the house and he'd be sitting there on a chair with a giant plate of food. With his mouth full and still chewing, he would point at it and then flex his muscles, clearly to show me that his food was making him strong. Yes. Good job, buddy. Then there were the few times that I'd walk by when he didn't have a plate of food and he would do something else equally unnecessary. For example, he might suddenly start to do a random exercise move and then point at his muscles...or he'd try to give me some of his caffeine pills because he knew I liked to run.
Besides all that, the guy who owned the place never gave me a key to my room and even made me switch rooms halfway through my short stay. I had to leave my stuff all packed up when I left in the morning for work one day and he moved everything to my new room for me. When I got back later, I saw that he'd forgotten my towel so I knocked on the door of my old room ask for it back. A guy answered and, when I asked for the orange towel that had been hanging on the bed, he told me that he'd thought it was there for him to use to clean the floor. Tight.
5. Finally, I moved into my current apartment, with a guy named Jonas who is friends with a guy I've been dating here. There are no stupid rules, the water works, no one is an asshole and there are only four people max living here at any time. Jonas gave me a hug when I moved in and made me feel like family right away.
Well one day, once I was finally settled in, my dude and I were lying down holding hands and I was talking about how relieved I was to finally have a good apartment. I felt something on my hand but figured it was a fuzz or something and brushed it off. Two seconds later though, he jumped and I freaked out! Yes. You guessed it. There was a freaking cockroach IN my bed. I've had cockroaches in a lot of the places I've lived before but...in my bed? That was a first for me.
There's also pee on the toilet seat every day here and the kitchen has plenty of cockroaches but they're a smaller kind than I had in Mexico and Korea and that was the only time I had one in my room (I guess it was some sort of cockroach welcome hug?). Other than that, living here has been great and I'll miss it when I move out on Monday!
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Though the following isn't exactly my story to tell, it goes so well with this theme that I can't leave it out. A few days after my cockroach incident here, I told a student of mine about it during our class. Well a friend of hers had me beat...and she's Brazilian!
She had started renting a room in a family's house, here in Rio. It was a family of four (a grandma, two parents and a kid) and they were renting one room to my friend's friend and the other to a Colombian guy. Well, according to this girl, the family was getting crazier by the day. First of all, they had a cat, which they hadn't told her about, and she was allergic. Second, the family kept eating all the food she bought. Third, and most ridiculously, the second night that she lived in the house, the grandma came into her room while she was getting ready for bed and laid out a blanket and pillow on the floor...and proceeded to sleep there. What the hell?! It gets worse, though... The grandma went on to do this a few more nights until one morning, when the girl woke up, the grandma was in the freaking bed with her!!!! What. The. F&%$?!?!
The poor girl called my friend crying and I think got out of the situation soon after that but omg.
The moral of the story? Good freaking luck while looking for housing in Rio, especially if you're a foreigner or a dude and espeeecially if you're a foreign dude.
But do look for housing here because this city really is marvelous, as they say, and I'm gonna have a lot of trouble leaving here. Here's to better housing situations for the next few months in Colombia!
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