when the lights go down in the city

well it was another apartment-y day in taoyuan. i asked the owner about the water when we were touring it with him yesterday and he told me there was no filter but the water in taiwan just isn't good anyway and we would need to boil it. then the real estate company guy, eddie, called tess later in the evening and said the owner decided to install a water filter on the sink for us. so we spent the morning hanging out while they installed it.

the landlord is an interesting guy, mr. dong. he was in the air force for a long long time until he started flying for china airlines. he's retired now and lives in taipei. for the first 10 minutes of our lease meeting yesterday, his face was stone-cold serious. no smiling, no laughing, arms folded.

but tess, katie and i are all pretty smiley, bubbly north american girls and we were super excited about signing everything, so he loosened up over time. he said he has 2 daughters, 20 and 18. by the end of it, he was smiling and laughing and making little jokes. i think he's pretty good.

the beeest part of the contract signing was when we had to stamp 3 sets of contracts with our thumb prints. we had to stamp every folded over page.

we just got back from the friendship store, where everything is super cheap. we spent $100 on everything we need to get up and running. dishes, cleaning stuff, kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff. we opted for asian-fab whenever we had the option. the mop is barbie pink.

i find out about the internship sometime this week and i leave for thailand on wednesday! exciting week for me. at least all news is good news at this point. oh! speaking of good news, i was able to put my plane ticket on hold so i only have to change it once and i don't lose the $700 i have in it. good day all around.