The Day Before School

When I left off, I was about to visit the house which still had an available room. I did, and it was somewhat different than what I had expected. It’s a house that’s owned by a middle-aged woman that has her own piano teaching school and has been inviting international students into her house for many years. The house is a bit off the beaten path, but it’s very nice and clean inside. Just the way she likes it. Most of the other residents are about my age, maybe a bit older. I was introduced to a girl from Seattle that’s attending medical school, an Indonesian guy that is studying classical piano, the 3 dogs, 2 cats, and 2 guinea pigs. I was also told that a Japanese-American from Manhattan lives there and that the woman, Alice, was looking for a European person to fill the last room.

She showed me around the house and the front porch, and all I could think was that this house was somehow very familiar and very strange to me at the same time. Anyways, we talked for a bit on the back porch and then she told me all the rules of the house, of which there are many. Everybody has a day of the week in which they clean the kitchen and mop the floor plus another chore that needs to be done on the weekend. She understands that people have people have different ideas of what is considered “clean”, but she is quite adamant about having the house completely spotless. “If I find a hair in the bathroom, it’s completely unacceptable.” So, logically, I agreed to live there. She admitted that I looked well dressed and that I was a good conversationalist. Then she asked if I had played any musical instruments, and I told her that I had played the piano and the trumpet. “Well why didn’t you say so!” Basically, anybody that has every played the piano in their lifetime is a friend of hers. She then went on to tell me about her students and about how her daughter lives down the street with an English bloke who is an excellent chef.

Before dragging on too long, I asked about specifics for paying rent or signing paperwork. She told me not to worry about that since I would be paying her in cash or check and she would be giving me a receipt. This was a big relief for me, since renting a room or a house in Australia is very serious business. Every single detail needs to be looked over carefully before signing a lease otherwise people will take advantage of you as soon as they possibly can. There’s even a branch of the government, called the RTA, which protects the lessors and the renters from being ripped off. Well, getting cash is not an easy thing for me to do, especially 6 weeks of rent (2 weeks up front, plus 4 weeks for the security deposit). So, I decided to open a bank account, which wouldn’t happen until Monday, when the banks were open again. I decided that I would move in once I at least had a bank account.

I had found a place to live and then on top of that I found my bags had arrived at my friend’s apartment when I returned. Then I opened one up and found that my toothpaste had spilled onto a few of my shirts and jacket. Oh well, I didn’t have to wear the same pair of pants and shoes that I had been for almost 5 days now.

Yesterday was an interesting day. I walked to campus, got a few things out of the way, ate lunch, and met up with the other UW guys. They had heard about a park where the sand volleyball club was meeting for an all-day event. After a lot more walking, we found the park and a guy recognized us as being “not from around here”. They offered us a beer and told us that they had a mini tournament going on, but that we could play on the back court. So we met a few people and played volleyball for about 2 hours. Meanwhile, the weather was very slowly changing from a slight drizzle to a downpour. Most everyone there had a car except for us. So the guy who was running the place offered us the rest of the beer in the keg if we helped clean up at the end. We happily agreed. The take-down took a while and we got pretty wet. But we also got 3-4 beers each, plus a sausage out of it. This guy and the other woman were really cool people. The guy told some really funny stories and the woman gave great advice about places to go for weekend trips. We ended up taking a cab back to the other guys’ place at around 8pm. Within an hour, we were all asleep. So, I picked up my stuff, told one of them I was leaving, and headed off to the apartment where my suitcases were. On the way there, it rained. Again.