The long awaited daily living article has arrived. I know I promised cartoon characters and road signs. But the requests have been made by the reading audience so the driving signs and characters will have to wait. Besides, Chris and I want to gather more pictures of goofy characters.
As a first time apartment renter, my experience has been good so far. Unlike in the US the neighbors are not really noisy except for the children practicing piano or violin or the sounds of children's footsteps running across the floor. There are no strange smells coming through the vents. Only once so far have we experienced the weird smell at about three in the morning. It smelled like burning plastic. We have no idea where it came from but our windows were all open so who knows.
There are several fascinating things about living in an apartment building here. Least of which is the size of the complex. There are nine buildings in our complex which are each around seventeen stories high with either four to six apartments on each floor. The nice thing about it is that the apartment buildings are only one apartment wide and range from the four to six apartments in length. The apartment buildings are designed so that one elevator services each set of two apartments. So apartments that end in one or two have one elevator for floors 1 through 17. Apartments that end in 3 and 4 have one elevator and apartments that end in 5 and 6 have a third elevator. Therefore, anyone elevator only services 34 families.
The other nice thing about this design is that it means every apartment gets windows on two sides of the building. So for us that means from our kitchen window we can view the kindergartners playing and from our living room balcony we can view the sunset over the mountain between the next apartment complex and ours.
People watching can be interesting from a ninth floor window. One of the most interesting people watching events I have had during the day is the moving process. The sheer fascination with this has made me include a picture in the latest set for everyone to see. So inevitably in every apartment dwellers life there comes the time to move in and move out. Which can be such a pain if there is no freight elevator and you really are not supposed to use the regular elevator. Besides the big pieces don't always fit anyways. So the inevitable question becomes, how do we get this stuff in? Let's just hire movers you say to your wife and let them deal with it. OK so moving day comes. Here come the movers with three trucks. One of the trucks has a ladder similar to a fire truck. This ladder extends up to the balcony of your 16th floor apartment on your living room side and has a hydraulic platform attached. The movers remove your sliding glass doors and start loading your valuables in plastic crates onto the platform. When the entire platform is full one layer high then the platform is lowered rather quickly I might add to the balcony window. No tie downs are used and no area is roped off around the truck to prevent people from walking underneath the platform or children for that matter. So there is a car next to where the hydraulic lift is operating, no one asks anyone to move it. So you just hope and pray it's not your car and that nothing falls off the platform, which did I mention has no sides. They are pretty quick about the whole process and the belongings get loaded rather quickly. Sounds nerve racking doesn't it? I have watched this process about ten times now and every time I just think " This would never happen in the states." But who knows, maybe in some big city it does happen and being a child of rural and suburban living I just have never witnessed it.
{Link to 3 pictures of the crazy movers added -C } -> Link
As for our apartment, as you enter in the front door you enter into a foyer area that has a sliding etched glass door to keep you separate from the main apartment. This area is present in every apartment and home I have been in. However, the etched glass seems to be specific to our apartment complex. This is where you remove your shoes. There is a built in shoe cupboard on the right hand side as you come in. As you open the glass door, there is a small step up as you step into the hallway. This step is usually the signifier in every building I have been in that this is where the shoes stay. If you make an immediate right after coming in the door you walk a short distance into the first bedroom. This was the kids bedroom for the owners that we are subleasing from so there is a little teddy bear stuck to the door and teddy bear boarder on the walls. The large central light fixture has glow in the dark angels stuck to it. and the ceiling is covered in pink and blue star wallpaper. The bedroom is not very big. There is a double bed along the right hand side and a standing piano on the left hand side. The bed butts up against a sliding glass door wall that is straight ahead. The glass door wall has window decals of cartoon characters stuck to it. The opening to the door wall is next to the piano. There is a small enclosed balcony here. On the balcony, are two kids dressers that are painted in red, white, and blue and a bookcase filled with children's books. I have flipped through the children's books and many of them look like thick comic books. The double bed is uncomfortable because there is no real mattress it's like sleeping on the box spring. The pressure points on your body tend to wake you up in the middle of the night to tell you to turn over. As you turn to leave the room, there is a closet along the wall where the entrance way is. In our case, this closet has been tied off with a ribbon since the owners of the apartment left it as storage.
When you walk out of the bedroom immediately to your right is the bathroom. There is a step down in to the bathroom. Much like European living the light switch is located outside of the actual room so you have to remember to reach around the corner before you walk in. The bathroom is pretty straight forward and looks much like an American bathroom with a tub except for three things: The mounted ladder looking towel rack, lack of a shower curtain, and the drain in the bathroom floor. Apparently, who needs a shower curtain if you have tile walls and floors and a drain. 
As you exit the bathroom you turn right and make another immediate right. Now you are standing in the main hallway that leads to the rest of the apartment with the etched glass doors at your back. There is a three drawer dresser located along the right hand wall. The three drawer dresser is elaborately painted green with flowers on the top and sides. The left wall is much shorter. As you pass the end of the left wall you are in the main area of the living room. The living room has wooden laminate floors, sea foam green wall paper, with a fruit and flower border, and a tan wall papered ceiling. If you look left around the wall there is a little sitting area with aqua blue loveseat and two aqua blue chairs. A silk carpet is located in the center if the room. A mock fireplace loaded with little trinkets and other nick knacks that belong to the owners is located along the wall. We have shifted the furniture and we don't really see the fireplace now since it is blocked by the loveseat. We bought a small coffee table that folds up which we have put in front of the loveseat. Along the south wall, is a sliding glass door wall that opens to a small balcony. The balcony is divided into three sections. The western most section has a large ficus tree like the one in our dining room at home except no braided trunk and about 1/3 smaller. The eastern most portion is where the drying wrack for the laundry is located. The eastern and western floors are lower than the central floor and have an indoor outdoor flooring in them. The central portion has the extended laminated floor from the living room with a wooden bench that is country blue with a flower design on the back and three potted geraniums. This central portion of the enclosed balcony is a great place to sit and read in the sunlight.
Along the eastern wall in the living room is the air conditioning unit, the television, and the stereo. If you have your back to the glass door wall for the balcony and are facing north you can see the dining room area. There is a wooden table that seats six. Beyond the wooden table is the enclosed balcony with the wash machine (and no dryer). That is right folks all line drying here. To the right of the entrance to the balcony is the kitchen. It is a fair size for an apartment. There is a side by side refrigerator, a two basin stainless steel sink, and a stove with a fish grill and a regular oven. Apparently we are lucky because some of the foreigners have no oven and only have a two burner stove top with a fish grill if they are lucky. The countertops are stainless steel and the cupboards are laminated wood. To the left of the stove, facing east, is a entrance door to the enclosed balcony. This is also the back up storage area for kitchen overflow. This is where our microwave oven, our rice cooker, and the kimchi refrigerator are located. Apparently, kimchi can be so potent that it seeps into other dishes if kept in the same refrigerator as the rest of the food so the solution is a small refrigerator dedicated just to Kimchi. Not that we have used it. We tend to eat our kimchi at restaurants and have only brought home a small container of pickled radish.
If you walk back past the dining room table and make a right facing east, you end up in a small hallway. On the right ( the north side) of the hallway is the office which has the laminated wooden floors with a rose colored throw rug, two book shelves, and a desk. There is tan/beige wallpaper on the walls and ceilings with a leaf border around the office walls.
The entrance to the second bedroom is located on the south side of the hallway. This was likely the parents bedroom, however, there is no bed. I think they probably either slept on a traditional Korean mattress on the floor or they took the bed. There is a large wardrobe that covers the entire eastern wall of the bedroom. The windows along the south wall in this room open up to the laundry lines. This is a nice feature if you just want to turn around and hang up the dry clothes in the wardrobe.
In the northwest corner of the room is a second bathroom. This bathroom has a shower, sink, and toilet only. The catch of the shower though is that the entire bathroom is the shower. Chris used this the first week we were here when we had no hot water but has not used it since because he was uncertain as to what would get wet in the room if he had the shower full blast. This room has burgundy and green ceramic tiles with a wall papered ceiling. That concludes the tour of our 1330 square foot apartment.
Now for a few interesting parts of living that have occurred in our first month. The day we moved in we found out that we would not have hot water for a week and a half. This proposes interesting shower and cleaning problems which we managed with quick showers and doing the best you can with cold water. The strategy of waste management is another feat we had to concur. Being that we are spoiled Americans because we have garbage disposals and city supplied curbside pick up we had to figure out how it was done here. Trash is separated. No garbage disposal. There is a separate trash can for food waste but not all food waste. Shells and husks go in the regular trash. There is a separate 55-gallon drum in the dumpster area for cooking oil. Papers are bundled and are picked up only on the 11th and 26th of the month. Other things are also separated out like metal cans, plastic, and cardboard. These things are placed in bags specific to each apartment building next to the curb once a week. All other waste is placed in the specially purchased green bags and go in the dumpster.
Mail, now in the US if you have outgoing mail you put it in the mail box and put the flag up. Here you go to the post office. The fun part is the incoming mail. Chris and I are still not proficient in Hangeul so I have had to tote my mail once a week to my Korean friend to ask her what is ours and what we have to pay. I still haven't figured out how to send a package to the US because I have to figure out where to get a box and then how to ship it the cheapest way. But that is another adventure.
My first attempts at paying bills on my own was adventurous. I tried to take our utility bill payment to the apartment complex office but no, everything is handled through the bank for all bills. Regardless of who you have to pay. They have no checks here. If you need to pay someone you give them your bank account number and they deposit the money.
Cooking, we were somewhat prepared for the fact that we were going to be adjusting to the metric system and the centigrade scale and the fact that the things we like to cook with i.e. spices may not be available. But there is always the adventure of trying to cook for the first time. My first loaf of homemade bread turned out awful. I ended up pitching it and paying the extra money to buy the ingredients I needed from the import stand. The one perk of being a foreigner from America is that there are a lot of American troops here in Korea so it is easier to get American products than say European. We are managing. The great thing is that Chris and I are people that are willing to explore options. However, there is still some fear of cooking certain things like squid. We love the stuff but have no idea how to clean it. So I need to sit down with a copy of the Joy of Cooking and do a little reading. The leeriness of strange fruits and vegetables is there sometimes too. Some of them we have seen in the fruit market at home and some we have never seen. I had a slight fear of these yellow squash looking things do to my allergies but then I found out that they are not a squash at all they fall somewhere between a cantaloupe and a honeydew in taste. Unfortunately unlike the US, I discovered this at the end of their season and will not be likely to find them shortly. The joys of living abroad.
Since Chris usually has the car, I have yet to drive over here. Frankly, their driving scares me a little. It's incredibly common to have people cut you off especially taxis and buses, have children dart out in front of your car, and have people optionally stop at lights. I tend to take the bus wherever I need to go. They are pretty accessible and we are at the start of several of the cross town bus routes so I can usually get to where I need to go without switching buses. It is best not to ride the bus during rush hour because they cram you in like sardines and you are usually standing. So the adventure becomes what can I hold onto to prevent me from shifting into the person next to me.
Anyways, in general things are going pretty well our first month and a half. Take care everyone.
H