Movin'

Well, I re-signed my contract with Hess so I'll be staying in Taiwan a little longer. I will be coming home for a visit in Mid-December though.

My roommates have already returned to the US and Canada, so I have the apartment to myself. I have to have it cleaned out but next Sunday so I can move out though. Given my slight aversion to cleaning and my even bigger aversion to packing stuff up and throwing stuff away, this is quite a task.

I started to look for apartments in and around Fong Yuan, where I work. It hasn't been a great experience- all the places have been small one-room affairs with a bed and not much else. Nothing I couldn't live with but nothing that I really want. Since I will be going to the US so soon, I will move my stuff to live with Jasmine and TOm and Cindy for a few weeks. Hopefully when I get back I can find my own place.

I've also looked at a few apartments in a town called Shi-Gong, outside of Fong Yuan, between there and DongShi, where Jasmine lives. I would be the only foreigner living there. It has a bike path that goes to Fong Yuan and Dong Shi and mountains nearby so it would be a nice place to live. But the places there... The first place I saw was a huge house where the lady stored her apple harvest (but assured us that she would move out the apples when she got a tenant). A couple from Jasmine's congregation (my future congregation!) who don't really speak English took me to a couple more places- one was another too-big house (with squat toilets in the bathrooms!). The other was a house that the landlady had supposedly broken up into apartments. Which were nice except she just rented out each floor without actually separating the apartments from each other- the stairway goes up the middle of the building so you have to cross the common stairway to get from, say, your bedroom to your bathroom. It was, in the words of Shu Jiemei, "Tai kepa!" Too terrible!

But I'm not too worried. I've got a place to live for now and I'm sure something will fall into place.