Few days before I arrived in Taipei, the school informed me that I could not stay in the dorm because I merely came for studying Mandarin. Does that make me "half-student?" Geez. I suppose they don't have enough rooms to provide all students studying in Shida. =(

Anyway, no point in grumbling. The only way out is to find a room near the school so that I can save both money and time in commuting.

Oh man, where should I start? Well, good thing for you, as I've been going through this hassle, now I can share with you on few places to find information about accommodation while you are studying. =)

1. Ask the school

When your language school tell you that you cannot stay in their accommodation, it does not mean that they cannot help giving you suggestion on where to look for outside accommodation. One of the helpful staff in Shida's office asked me to go to level 7 of Mandarin Training Center building to see the notice board. And she's right, there are a lot of adverts offering rental and most of them are located quite near to the school. In fact, I got my place now from this notice board. Cool!

2. Online house hunting

These days, most of information can be found online and that includes adverts about rental. You can go to www. tealit.com and go to the apartment/ rental category. In short, you can click this link -> http://www.tealit.com/ad_categories.php?section_id=31

Most of the landlords who offer the place in the above website can speak at least simple English. So there should not be any problem when you call them to inquire further about the place.

There is another site called http://www.591.com.tw/ where the Taiwanese often posts their accommodation adverts on. But the hardest obstacle in browsing this website is it is written in Mandarin. If you have zero-ability of reading Chinese character and zero-patience of using Google Translate, then I suppose this website is not for you. =P

If you have tried the above and still has not found an ideal place to your liking, you can try to get the help of Tsuei Mama (http://www.tmm.org.tw/english/). It is said that they can help you to find accommodation but you have to pay certain fees (which I heard is not that high). Not sure about their efficiency as I did not use this method to find mine.

Good luck with your house hunting!