Finding a flatmate (and a flat)

I'm in the middle of the "battle" (as my dad calls it) to find a place to live. It's difficult since I don't know many people here. To find a flatmate, for example, I had to rely upon the university's housing message boards.

I tried to find a flatmate before I left, so that even though I would be arriving in London without a place to live, I'd at least have someone to live with. That didn't quite work out: I am meeting a girl tomorrow who I might live with, but she's also looking at single rooms, which means I have to as well.

These online message boards are a lot like internet dating. I've never had to do this before: either the university assigned me to someone else or I got together with a couple friends. It's a weird experience to advertise myself online and then to field responses. You can post an advertisement of your own ("I'm 21, from Texas, and starting a master's degree in Shakespeare. I don't smoke and am quite tidy.") or respond to others. Sometimes it's a landlord making a post. There seem to be quite a few ladies who live in Camden who are looking for postgraduate students to live in a room in their house, so I've been calling some of them.

I couldn't look much over the weekend, so I've been really looking now for two days. I'm already sick of it! I don't like looking all by myself and trying to coordinate with landlords and letting agents and walking all over London and (as happened last night) sometimes getting lost. But I suppose if I can do this, I can do anything.

I think it's a bit harder for me since I'm just moving to the country, and so I don't have a renting history in the UK. Landlords are less likely to want to rent to me. This whole process--getting a visa, finding a place to live, finding a job--seems designed to keep Americans out of the country. You'd think they would give some of us a chance!