The people upstairs

I spent the last two hours with "The people upstairs" so for all three of you that are reading this (Hi mom) I feel like I owe it to them to say something about them. Anyway there's a large extended family living upstairs. I think they own the whole building and they live on top of it. The landlord himself is deaf and his wife runs a beauty salon and likes to go swimming. According to her daughter and daughter-in-law she likes to leave the house without a key and then call them and make them come back to let her in. They have three kids Vincent, Jeremiah, and Feili. Vincent and his wife Shuqin (Rebecca) and their two kids, Angela and Allan, live upstairs and Feili commutes between here and Xinchu. When she's here, she lives in the apartment where I am. She's the one who speaks English the best, although Vincent speaks some as well. Jeremiah and his wife/fiancee/girlfriend? Eva used to live here but they went to study theology in Singapore shortly after I arrived. Have I mentioned they like Jesus a lot? They do. Although their offers to take me to church or bible study have mostly stopped now, so their kindness is geniune I think, I hope.

Anyway, Shuqin likes me. I think in general they like female tenants better than male ones. She invites me up to eat with them a lot or if I have a question she can usually answer it or take me to buy something. I also get along well with her kids Allan and Angela. Angela is 7 and likes the color pink. For some reason we had Candyland in our apartment. This is just one of the mysterious objects that remains, along with a 2003 Playboy, a bottle of what was ostensibly Scotch which now has water and some brown stuff floating at the bottom of it, and a bottle of brown liquid which is labeled opium.

Since the rules are in English, Angela just made up rules. What's weird is every time she plays she makes them up differently and they also get increasingly elaborate. It's really amazing. Allan is 3 and was born in America, in Kirkland, Washington to be exact, and we have the same birthday. He's mostly a good kid, although sometimes he makes a sound like the alien from Alien. I'm not kidding. When both of them are mad, they can wrinkle their eyebrows so that the bridge of their nose makes a bump 3 cm high. They really like my computer because their father won't let them use his. They particularly like Futurama, and Angela now knows the words Robot and You're cheating. Sometimes I do my job.