My Apartment!

At long last, and after much patient waiting, I made it to my apartment yesterday! And I have to say, even if it is less convenient to get to my schools the views make up for it! Instead of just walking a few blocks to each of my schools, I have to get on a bus for about 20 minutes then walk about 10 minutes to my schools. Not terribly inconvenient, but the buses here are very crowded and I have to pay the fare (which is only 1000 won [about $1], but it's the principle of the matter). But then again, this apartment is in a much nicer area (I've always been a country girl at heart). And I'm not going to miss seeing the call cards on my door step every day.

Instead, this is the view from the windows in the hall my room is in. I still can't believe that I can see the ocean everyday! When I tell people that before coming here I had never even seen the ocean they're always shocked. I haven't made to the beach yet, but that's something I plan to remedy very soon. The breezes that come in through windows smell like the ocean. Maybe the ocean will seem real when I standing in it...

 

This is the sports area attached to the Foreign Language High School next door to the apartment building.

This is the view up the mountain from my balcony. Again, mountains aren't really a thing at home and I find that between the ocean and the mountains the landscape is just so majestic here.  It's very moving, nearly to tears.

These cute homes made me think of the Alps and Heidi, but here they are in South Korea halfway up the mountain behind our apartments.

There are lots of Guest English Teachers living in this dorm, and they have all been very welcoming! John, the nice Aucklander next door stopped by to tell me that (for a small fee) I could just piggy-back off of his wifi service rather than have to pay for the installation of my own router. That makes everything so much easier!! It's like a little western haven here. Not exactly what I had booked on when I was preparing to come here, but it does make dealing with any culture shock easier.

So here is a brief tour of my apartment:

The front entry way. Culture dictates that you take your shoes off and leave them here. The bathroom, which is quite large but a little dated, is through the door on the right.

The main part of the room. Still in some disarray from moving in. I've now added some maps and pictures to the walls to make it a bit more homey. The computer works better than the one I have at school. The bed isn't as bad as the others I've used here, that means it's more like sleeping in a sheet of plywood rather than a slab of concrete. Koreans also don't use the sheet sets that we do. There are instead layers of blankets and comforters. I tend to use the extra blankets and such as mattress pads and use a sheet that I brought with me to cover myself since it's so warm here. And of course I brought Ruby the Kangaroo with me! My brother bought me that (under coercion and I paid him back, but still it's the thought that counts?). Unfortunately, the TV doesn't work. I'd have to pay for teh service, and with the existence of the internet the TV is obsolete. Now I just have to find a place in the room to store it. The glass door wall leads out to my balcony. It's enclosed in windows that con be opened. It's about 12 feet long by 3 feet deep. Probably one of my favorite features of Korean houses is that the vast majority of them have these balconies.

In to corner by the front hall/entrance is the kitchen/laundry hybrid area. Behind the fridge there's a stove top that works very well, apparently.  The sink is huge. I don't know why. And next to the sink is the laundry machine. At the end of a cycle it chines a charming little song that's about a minute long. Much friendlier than the harsh beep of the machines at home. Where's the dryer? They practically don't exist here. Everyone uses a drying rack to air dry their clean clothes. I have to go and purchase one in the net few days.

So that's the apartment. In the next couple days I'll post pictures of my schools, the kids, and my co-teachers. Tomorrow is my first day to work with a large group of kids. Monday is 2nd and 3rd graders day, so things should be interesting. Wish me luck!