We have been here for about a week and have found our apartment but we are waiting to move in. The landlord has been living in the flat and she has never rented it before. As a local Taiwanese person she is use to the heat and humidity and felt no need for A/C units. She generously agreed to add 4 units (bedroom, kitchen, 2 in the main area) to the apartment for us. She is also replacing the old fashioned water heater that is the size of a closet to a small one that will hang over the newly installed dryer. After looking at 11 apts. we noticed that they do not use color on their walls. The places have all been painted eggshell white from base board to walls and crown molding to ceiling. She agreed to allow the place to be painted so we would hopefully stay longer and be good tenants. We chose colors from her painter: a light yellow for the main living area, soft brown for the bedroom and accents of purple in entry and kitchen, ceilings will remain the same. We went over yesterday and no painting has started yet. We need to be out of our temp housing by the 30th. Keeping our fingers crossed.
Temp housing is provided by teachers who are on vacation for the summer. The place as mentioned before is a fifth floor walk up and I assumed locally furnished, there is furniture everywhere that makes it hard to navigate. We are still living out of our bags as well. The teacher emailed me a note on how to activate the security alarm and how much to pay for air conditioning each day, 100NT a day, about 3 US dollars. Seems weird to charge us for staying here when they volunteered the place. It feels like an invasion of privacy staying here. There were no towels left out and so I had to search thru cabinets to find some.
Since we found the apartment we have been wandering around the area trying to find the best route to school, places to eat, the bus stop, and grocery store. The heat and humidity has kept us inside most days and stopped us from exploring too much. Hence no exciting photos.
Mike has been reading about Taipei as it has been his first opportunity due to work and school. We are trying to recognize words on menus, the TV, and on signs as we see them. I can identify the numbers 0-9 (they use mostly English numbers though), the words “no”, “ham” and “cheese”. It is slow but fun. We can say thank you (shyeh, shyeh), don’t want (boo yow), and you good (knee how) which is a greeting such as hello.We plan to take classes once we settle in and find out where we should take them.
There are a great deal of restaurants in the area that serve Western style cuisine: Jake’s Mexican, Mary’s Hamburger, KFC, Swensen’s, G and G, Subway, etc… We use these when we are too hungry to experiment. There is also the Takashimaya mall with several floors of department stores, a grocery store called Jason’s and a food court in the basement with several local and international choices. We have tried omurice from Japan which is an omelet covering rice usually flavored with chicken and ketchup and then topped with sauces and meat, cheeses, or vegetables. We also got a side of bread that was like a puff pastry over a bowl of cream of corn soup. It was very good. We also tried potato curry from India which was not too spicy for my palette. We will not go hungry here.
We did get to the beach with Yi Ling who is the wife of a teacher and who found us our apt. They rent a flat on the beach with 3 other couples. It has one large room, kitchen and bathroom. It use to be a restaurant. No bedroom but it is only an hour from where we live. The rent is dirt cheap and is a great escape from city living. I accidentally deleted those photos. Will have to go again. There is a bus that will take us up to Baishawan, White Sand Beach.
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