Good News: The Search is Over! & Bad News: I Broke Our Camera

So we haven't blogged for a few days because the last few days have been a bit hellish. We've only been in Taiwan about a week, but the last few days have felt like twice that long.

We came back from Taichung because of the transportation situation. Taichung has a lot less public transportation and no MRT at all (I think MRT stands for Mass Rapid Transit - it's the Taipei subway).

We started looking for an apartment right away. We searched all of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and were getting pretty desperate. All the apartment ads are in Chinese, so my former students Shane and Mark helped us to find apartments and advised us on where we should live. A lot of the apartments are really old-fashioned with bathrooms that have no separate shower... the shower is a hand held shower head coming out of the wall that pretty much sprays the whole bathroom. It's great at saving space.

We put an offer on one place, but were turned down because the landlord didn't speak English. It was my favorite place, so too bad.

Finally, today by a stroke of luck or fate or something we decided on a place and tomorrow we will make our deposit. An apartment was suggested by a random student who contacted me last night. I had this student for only two days in Irvine, but she's really friendly. She sent me a link to an apartment that looked good, so we contacted the owner. She said she SOLD the apartment that morning. But she had a better apartment. Shane and I went to check it out. It had an old style bath, no storage space, and there was only one room... the living/bed room. After I said we couldn't take that room, the lady said her friend was looking to sell an apartment I might be more interested in. She would call her friend and see if the place was rentable instead. It was. We rushed over after we got the call. We had a good feeling about this place (actually Megan would say  I had a good feeling about every place). The rest will soon be history.

 I'll have pictures up soon.

About the camera... I was walking by this old, deserted house that must have bad feng shui... there was a tiny tiny puddle with some algae in it. I was carrying my laptop in my book bag... it's pretty heavy. As I stepped in the puddle I started to slip. I tried to get my footing. stumbled like four times. The laptop was too heavy. The camera broke my fall.

Thanks camera! RIP.

J/K. Shane says we can get it repaired. Maybe. My pants have been covered in algae all day :(

Last picture from our loyal camera:

The Empire Strikes Back!