Tuesday, December 04, 2007

New Apartment






Okay, here's some pics of my new apartment. In November I moved to this new place, which is quite far from my old place. The first great thing about it is its almost twice as big as my previous place! I thought I should get some more furniture to fill out the walls, but after living in such small cramped spaces, its kinda nice just to have space with nothing there. So I leave it as it is.

My new school is paying for the place. Originally they had hired a guy who had a wife, so he requested a larger apartment. But after a few weeks he bolted, leaving the school without a teacher and an empty apartment. When I interviewed for the job, they showed me to the apartment. This guy was basically squatting there until something else came along, from what I could tell. The place was a mess, littered with hair all over the floor, smelling like stale smoke and lots of plastic bags and pizza boxes in the storage room. Its teachers like this that give foreigners a bad reputation sometimes, doing the midnight run and such. But there are also schools who get bad reps for not paying their schools as promised (I have a few comments about this later).

So I took the job and the apartment. Thankfully the director of the new school helped me move in his van, only took one trip. The large bed was already supplied, as well as the TV. So you can see all the stuff in my space. In the kitchen, that tall white cabinet is actually the refrigerator, made to blend into the decorum. Looks really good, but overall not enough space for my pots and pans. I have a convenient shoe closet next to the door, and my own washing machine (under the gas range, which is surprisingly common in Korean design). The bathroom is still the open design, but noticeably bigger than my last place, and more light. I don't get quite as much daylight though, due to the smaller windows and the length of this place. But its okay because this place is free :-)

Also, you can notice a few kittens in one of the pictures. In October, one of my friends went hiking and came across a small plastic bag with 4 kittens in it, not able to even feed themselves. Apparently someone just took them into the mountain and dropped them off to die! So he grabbed them, took them to his place and kept them fed and potty trained them. I agreed to take two (kinda wished I only had 1 now though, they go crazy and claw everything!) There's good and bad about owning them, but I suppose its good overall :-)