My apartment

Hey everyone! Sorry for the late entry.

Two weeks ago I finally found an apartment. But before that, I went through some trouble...

After looking at so many dark and small rooms, and dealing with strange and creepy landlords, I was getting a little bit nervous and made a rash decision: I looked at a room that seemed quite nice and incredibly cheap - for a change - and immediately afterwards agreed to renting the room. The next day I was ecstatic and instantly moved in. After two hours I realized why the price of the apartment was so low: a small layer of mold, almost invisible to the naked eye, covered a whole wall! In my misfortune there was however a stroke of luck: I hadn't signed a contract and it was possible to move out the same day.

And, the day after this, I finally found a nice apartment, in a new, mold-free building! It's a bit more expensive, but at it's a nice, relatively big room with several windows:

By the way, the picture quality this time is not that good, I know. That's because I brought the wrong camera charger with me and have to take pictures from my phone now...

But, back to my new apartment. The most notable thing about the new room is the neighbourhood it is in: despite the dirty little alleys that are crowded with hundreds of motorcycles (something you can see in all parts of New Taipei City), it has its charms. For starters, my house is located between a small, eerie sweatshop (the women only sew the clothes at night...) and some sort of temple that always exhales a strong incense scent. Here you can see my street (on a rainy day). It's hard to imagine a new, clean house in between, but I can assure you, it's there!

The street connects two bigger, parallel streets with each other. The first parallel street is filled with food vendors that sell all kinds of different foods, from dumpling and pig intestines to bubble tea and donuts. Next to the food vendors, there are several restaurants, some small barber shops (something very typical in New Taipei City), at least three temples and even a small park (see on the picture).

The other street contains the Sanchong night market. Night markets can be found all over Taiwan. As the name suggests, these are markets that are only open at night, and most vendors sell local snacks and clothes. I already tried a lot of these snacks, and I will tell you a bit more about them in one of the following weeks.

In the morning, the street contains a normal market, where you can buy fruit, vegetables, fish and meat. I already bought a lot of fruit there, which gave me some opportunities to practise my Chinese! The vendors usually don't speak any English, so I have to communicate with them through hand gestures and the little Chinese I already know. It's not only then that I realize I'm a real stranger here. Sometimes, when I walk through the streets in my neighborhood, I notice that everyone is staring at me.

Finally, I'd like to show you where my apartment is located in Taipei. I already mentioned that I live in New Taipei City. Here, the houses are small and gray, there are not a lot of foreigners on the streets and the roads are filled with motorcycles instead of cars. But this is the 'real' Taipei, were the common people live. Below, you can see an MRT map. The MRT is the metro of Taipei and I use it every day to get to university. Below, you can see the MRT station close to my house, the university, and the start of the city center.

So, this is it for today. I hope I'll be able to write the next entry soon, to tell you about my trip to Taichung two weekends ago (after I found my new room).