University Accomodations

For the past two years at university in the United States I have lived in a pretty traditional dorm setup. I had a roommate that I shared my room with and we shared a bathroom with two other girls, our suitemates.

Our flat in Oxford is quite different. We live in Block K of the undergraduate student village on one of the University's main campuses. The building is made out of dark brown bricks instead of the reddish ones typical in the United States. Our flat is at the base of the block and we do not have to climb any stairs to get to it. To get inside you must walk about eight feet in an outdoors hallway that is only as wide as the door. It is very hard to maneuver there when your hands are full of grocery bags. A completely white key card is used on a black sensor pad to open the door.

Inside there are eight separate rooms in total plus the hallway. Five of these rooms are bedrooms, two are bathrooms, and one room is the kitchen/dining room/living room.

Each of the two bathrooms hold different fixtures though both have a glass shelf and hooks on the backs of the door. The room closest to the door has the toilet and a sink, and the one next to the kitchen has the shower and another sink. This is definitely more convenient when four or five people are all living together.

I find the shower quite strange. It is actually elevated about eight or ten inches off of the ground and you have to step up into it. It is quite narrow with a clear plastic door. Caitlin and Libby call it the coffin because it is almost to small for their heights. They both have to stoop a bit to get their heads under the shower head and they are often bumping their elbows against the walls. Luckily, Amy and I do not have that problem since we are both only a little of five feet tall.

There are only four of us living in the flat so one of the rooms, Room D, is locked and empty. At the start of the school year we thought that someone might move in but no one did. This was probably fortuitous since we have an ongoing joke where we blame Roommate D whenever something goes wrong. The joke just wouldn't be the same if someone actually lived there, plus it would be incredibly rude. Caitlin, Libby and I (and Room D) all have rooms in the "upstairs" portion of the flat (there are only five stairs). Amy is downstairs in Room E which is huge because it used to be the living room before the school needed more beds so it was converted into a bedroom. 

The rest of the bedrooms are small, just big enough to fit a twin bed, desk, wardrobe, and two side tables. All of the furniture is a golden beige color and the desk and one side table have spotty grey laminate tops.

Above the desk I have three shelves though I only really use one of them. Partially because they are difficult to reach and partially because I prefer to shove things in drawers so the room looks less messy. Two of the walls have pin boards so that we can hang up decorations without damaging the walls. I use the pin board above my wall for postcards I have bought on different trips, and my necklaces are hanging on the board over the desk.

The walls are that in-between off-white, beige and yellow color that many colleges seem to paint their walls. Perhaps they are trying not to use white because it is reminiscent of prisons and hospitals, though I personally would prefer to have white walls since the yellowy color always looks a little dingy. Or, the already dirty looking color helps to camoflage any new dirt. The carpet in my room is grayish blue while the carpet in the hallway is a darker navy. Libby's room has brown carpeting.

None of our rooms are exactly the same, though they probably should be since we are all paying the same amount to stay here. I know that Libby is missing a shelf and a wall mirror, and Caitlin only has one side table. Amy did not have a desk lamp but they finally brought her one after nearly three weeks of requests.

Straight down the hallway from the front door is the door to the kitchen. We used to keep the kitchen door propped open with the coffee table but a woman came and told us it had to stay closed for fire safety. When you first walk in you see a sliding glass door covered in horrendous curtains. The green, beige, rust and burgundy curtains look like they should be found at a 1980s motel in the Southwest Unites States. We liked to joke that the university had them put up specially for us Americans so we would feel more at home. All of the bedrooms also have the same curtains, but I think I have desensitized myself to them since I rarely notice how bad they look anymore.

In front of the glass door, against one of the walls there are three burgundy, armless chairs pushed together and covered with spare blue blankets to form a kind of couch. A fifth chair is across from the "couch" with the low square coffee table on its left. The chairs are well padded and surprisingly
comfortable though every single one has rips where the stuffing is poking out.

Behind the fifth chair and the coffee table is the grey dining table. They are five metal chairs with burgundy upholstery arranged around it.  Three of the chairs are hard to get in and out of because the table is pressed so close to the wall and radiator but there is no where else for us to put it. At the head of the dining table there is another wall pin board where the staff of the student village post the rules of the flat, fire safety, and the cleaning schedule.

Next to the dining table, against the wall, are the refrigerator and the freezer. Instead of being one combined unit like most people in the United States have, they are separate appliances. The are small, measuring about five feet tall and three feet wide. It would be much more convenient if the refrigerator was on the right instead of the freezer because we use it much more often and when you open the door it often hits one of the dining chairs.

The kitchen is laid out in a U shape with the sink on the left hand side and the stove on the right. The pale cabinets are actually very nice, probably the only new thing the rooms have gotten in years. The countertops are blue laminate with flat metal sheets attached on either side of the stove for cutting and placing hot pots. The electric stove is very small. It does not even reachas high as the countertop. It has four burners (known as hobs in the UK, the term completely stumping us when filling out our room inventory sheets), two small and two large. There is a microwave and we requested and received a tea kettle. Before then we had been heating up our tea water in the microwave.

To the right of the kitchen is the trash bag and recycle bins. Notice that I said bags and not bins. There are not any trash bins. Instead there are these rectangular metal devices attached to the wall that the bags hang from with the opening covered with a metal lid. They are very unsightly and stick out from the wall a ways. I will admit to running into them at least once.

One major difference here is that there are a ton of switches. Each outlet has a switch to turn itself on and off, I am guessing to save power. The stove also has its own on and off switch that we did not notice until we had turned the knobs on the stove, expecting it to heat up and then being completely puzzled when it remained cold. It is annoying at times when you plug in something like your computer and come back later expecting it to be fully charged but it isn't because you forgot to flip the outlet switch.

I have been very fortunate getting to live with four of my friends. We all do our share of the cleaning and we each have a day of the week where we cook dinner. If something is wrong, I feel comfortable sharing my feelings with them and it is nice knowing that they are nearby if I need them.