When settling in for the upcoming school year, missing furniture, fixing a broken air conditioner and trying to find a place to store 10 pounds of potatoes are all issues transfer students must deal with – aside from orientation, registration and figuring out what street they’re on.

Finding an apartment was a semi-difficult task for Andy Bibliowicz, a junior from Atlanta, even in a town with “Roommate Wanted” fliers on every corner. With a skateboard as his sole means of transportation, Bibliowicz wanted to find an apartment near campus and browsed multiple Web sites and pamphlets before finally travelling to Athens to search for the perfect apartment. But it wasn’t until he Googled “apartments close to Athens campus” that he found his match.

The transfer student from Auburn University signed a lease for a fully furnished bedroom, but two days before classes resume, his furniture is yet to be seen. Bibliowicz said he has spoken to the apartment complex, but they haven’t been much help in locating the missing furniture and even charged him an extra $15 for paying his rent online.

At first glance, everything seems to be in order at HyoungSik Kim’s apartment – a black shoe rack neatly holds more than 30 pairs of Kim and his roommate’s shoes near the front door and the temperature in the apartment seems almost perfect, but that is where the problem begins.

“The air conditioner runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Kim, a junior from the Atlanta Metropolitan College. “It’s not too cold, but I need to save money. I asked them to fix it and they said they’d come [Friday] afternoon, but they haven’t yet.”

When Kim visited the University more than a month ago, his initial thought was “country.”

“The campus is good for running outdoors . but I cannot get any [cell phone] signal in my house,” Kim said. “I can talk to my mom [in Korea] in the house, but I have to stay next to the window.”

Adam Platto has all his furniture and the air conditioner works properly, but connected Internet access is not a constant luxury for this junior from Atlanta.

“The Internet keeps flickering on and off and Charter doesn’t know what to do,” Platto said. “So they just keep replacing the modem.” Platto, a transfer student from Georgia State University, knew one of his roommates before the move-in, so the transition wasn’t awkward. But he still had to find ways to store the food he buys in bulks while sharing a small apartment with three other females.

“I try to buy in bulk when stuff is on sale … so I end up storing most of the food in my closet,” Platto said. “Since they give us beds that are four feet off the ground – I mean, you literally have to climb into bed – I have my dirty clothes and 10 pounds of potatoes underneath the bed.”

And to get from one class to another?

Kim settles for his shiny, black moped and Bibliowicz spends a beautiful Saturday afternoon at the University’s library to map out his class routes – ones that are skateboard-friendly, of course.