My School and Apartment, Part II: My Apartment

Hello! As promised, here is the second half of my two-part mega-post. Again, sorry these are coming so slowly, but the combination of a) my laziness, b) lamentable writing skills, and c) OCD to make my posts not look like a pile of crap makes for little motivation.

My Apartment

When I first arrived at my school, two of my co-teachers accompanied me to a nearby real estate office (there's seriously one every two or three blocks in Seoul) and signed a one-year contract on an apartment, that day.

With this teaching program, the Korean government subsidizes rent (but not utilities), and it's up to the school to find a place for the guest English teacher to stay.

Apparently, my school didn't know they were going to receive another (yes, another) guest English teacher until pretty late, so they didn't have an apartment ready for me. The one we signed for that day turned out to be fairly old and dirty... so much so that one of my co-teachers felt sorry for me and took it upon herself to find a different place. So, she somehow wiggled out of the first contract, and after about two weeks or so of living in a dirty, old apartment with few amenities, I moved to a brand-spanking new place with built-in clothing cabinets, shelves, a desk, and building-wide internet. It's so brand-spanking new, in fact, that they weren't even finished building the complex when I moved in; they just finished installing everything one or two weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of my old place, but here are some of my current place.

Built-in "closet" space, desk, and shelves: rare commodities.

This is basically my entire apartment. It's a one-room office-tel (Korean-English portmanteau word for "office-hotel") with a very small kitchen and bathroom. You will see just how small in a bit. That picture was taken from the entrance, directly in front of which is the bathroom. Here's a picture of the kitchen, entrance, and the door to the bathroom, as seen from the center of the room:

There's my reflection in the cabinet! And my underwear in the washer...

Now for the bathroom. Get ready for some culture shock, folks. Rae used to tell me about Korean office-tel bathrooms when we were in America, but I had completely forgotten about them until arriving here. So now that I slathered on a little bit of suspense-sauce, please focus your attention to the following:

The bathroom entrance...

Toiletries of a sundry variety.

The can.

Hm? Looks like a normal bathroom. But wait, why is there no shower? Why is there a drain in the center of the floor?? Why is the floor tiled like the bottom of a shower stall??? Could it be??? The bathroom is the shower stall??? Yes. Yes, it is.

Damn you, faucet-redirector.

This is pretty standard for a small, one-room apartment in Korea. The entire bathroom is also a shower room, and everything gets wet while you take a shower. In some larger office-tels, the bathroom will be a little larger, and the shower area will have a glass divider separating it from the rest of the bathroom (like a more normal bathroom). But even then, the shower is not designed to be self-contained, so one should expect the entire bathroom floor to be wet after showering. Hence those plastic green-blue bathroom slippers in the leftmost picture above. It's a little hard to get used to, and I haven't yet decided if I should leave the shower head affixed to the wall or if I should hold it in my hand while showering. I've tried both ways, and the former is a lot more convenient, but also results in more water leaking out of the bathroom. Another small annoyance is how the shower is connected to the faucet; sometimes, I forget to redirect the water flow from the shower head back to the faucet...

Overall, my apartment is rather nice, I'd say. As far as apartments in Seoul go, it's pretty standard, and it has some nice amenities (like the built-in desk/shelves/cabinets and the building-wide internet). Plus, it's brand-new. There are some downsides, but they aren't that major and I'm too lazy to list them. Anyway, I definitely can't complain, considering my rent is subsidized. Also, my place is literally a five-minute walk to my school; this is super nice.

Welp, that's about it, I guess. These pictures were taken when I first moved in and my apartment was a lot more sparsely equipped. Now, I have a nice coat tree, various pots and pans, a microwave, rice cooker, and a comically large laundry drying rack. I will probably post more up-to-date pictures later on, as well as pictures of the outside of my building and the surrounding area.

Until then, stay happy and healthy. Peace out.