The Village

The Village was my housing of convenience. It was University housing, could take me at the time and was generally just easiest to deal with. In this case you get what searched for not necessarily what you pay for.

The Village is a 400 person community made up of around 50 five bedroom town houses and the remainder apartments of various configurations. There is a main lobby to get into the complex with a desk with ping pong, pool table, a small computer lab with printer and scanner. Not quite the Pub. In our brief orientation we were introduced by Powerpoint to the equivalent of Eugene and Bill, Geoff Whitely, and the maintenance crew. The adult in charge that we have met looks like the lead singer of Rascal Flatts. He is in charge of various move in things and room inspections, but he is certainly no Sue.

Through the lobby and some sliding glass doors are the courtyards to the townhouses. Tightly packed with a maze of passageways, each townhouse is a 4 story, five bedroom residence. Ours has two bedrooms on main deck, two on first (one has a balcony turns out but not mine), the kitchen, dining, lounge and small balcony on second deck and a single bedroom and the large patio on third deck. As far as arrangements, it is very good. A group of Webbies in such an arrangement in the DC area would be more than happy. Accept that there is no package store anywhere close. But we could cope. The top balcony has a drain and a faucet, quite perfect for the accidental spilling of beverages, whether adult or adolescent.

The Village is expensive though. 6 payments of 2k each for a 12 month stay in my case. I’m not sure what the semester exchange students pay, but clearly this is place is not worth a $10,000/month rent. That’s Webb rates, and Pete fed me 3 meals a day that I didn’t have to shop for. And for as much as I complained, Erica Hansen gave me the internet. We have access to school internet but it does not allow high bandwidth applications, such as Skype, gaming and video services. A 10GB additional internet package is $40/month. 20GB is $50/month. That’s Comcast top speed rates but probably slower and capped.

And probably the worst part of the Village is the guest policy. Day time guests are alright, but overnight guests are quite forbidden. I suppose a friendly group of roommates could help to overcome this but the Eugene and Bill wander the courtyard at night. A family member can stay for $60/night (for a cot that I think they have to rent, couch surfing must be frowned on) for up to 7 days. I will investigate “family” in the future. Otherwise this situation is most unfriendly to young professionals/students attempting to visit and I will be most displeased with it and will have to plan my third semester accordingly.