Home

I haven't posted or send an "I'm still alive, family and friends" email in a while, so sorry about that. But since Kate has been writing a 30 page email all day, I took some photos of our apartment. It took two weeks, but we've finally made it our own. It took a lot of work.

So here's a much too in-depth tour of our new home.

To begin, Yeoju. If you open the larger image (click it) you'll see the building where our school is (Eastern Academy) and on the left (behind trees) is the location of our apartment.

Our street. Not exactly a happening place, but it's only a 15 minute walk/2 minute drive into town, across the bridge:

The neighbors. Yeoju county is big on ceramics, so there are ceramics shops absolutely everywhere. Kate and I call them cerammeries. Our apartment is the building on the right, just above the white SUV. If we don't nail one of those huge kimchi pots with the car I'll consider the year a success.

Our apartment! We live in the unit on the left, second floor up (there's a basement and a top floor apartment unit below and above us. That's our little white Kia out front. Stick shift! $7/gallon gas! We won't go too far, we promise.

Here's the view from the entrance. There's a little vestibule (not shown) between the front door and the entrance to the apartment for shoes. All the furniture you see came with the place. It's all shaky particle board.

Scooting to the left, here's the view of the living room. Kate rigged the christmas light screen this afternoon. It beats the hell out of the bare flourescent tubes in the rest of the house.

Moving straight back into the blue glow at the center of the above image....is the fish tank room. It had a twin bed in it until today, but we took it apart and put it on the back porch. This little room is about 10 by 10. The Barker kids should remember what it felt like to drain the swimming pool every year to scrub the blue pool liner. Standing in this room feels a lot like standing in the empty pool.

For now this room is just the office area, but Kate has designs on making it into an exercise/guest/whatever else room too. 

The entrance to the bedroom is right across from the couch in the living room. Not much to see except for a lumpy comforter, a weird headboard and the most amazing plastic flower print wallpaper you'll ever see.

On to the kitchen. Aside from needing a deep cleaning (And a really weird table) it's pretty nice. Kate's falling in love with metal countertops ("Nathan, the dish drying area has a sluice!). I'm not nuts about the fact that we're missing cabinet handles, but this kitchen is three times as big as our last one, so I won't complain too much.

This picture doesn't do the table justice. The top has wooden inlays and instead of feet, it's supported by a massive carved pillar. It looks like the designer was going for Tudor England inspired Americana. It's a sight to behold. We're thinking of covering the entire thing with a very large tablecloth.

Turning to the left 90 degrees is: the bathroom. I spent more than an hour in there today scrubbing away the mold. It's quite the bathroom--shower on top of a toilet, accompanied by a washing machine! But there's no sink (brush your teeth in the kitchen) and the washing machine drains straight onto the foor and down the shower drain (totally normal for Korea).  

Right next to the bathroom is our utility room, which somehow includes the refrigerator. It's also where we set up the drying rack for our clothes. This apartment is kind of huge.

Moving out the back of kitchen is the back "porch". When we got here there was stuff in it, but now there's a lot more because we moved a bunch of things that belonged to the previous occupants out. 

And finally, the scenic view from the back porch. It would really be lovely if there weren't trash and building supplies everywhere.

So, there it is. Despite the hints of cynicism and Kate's hyperbole (I'm not sure if she's sent her epic-long email yet, but its full of misrepresentations!) we actually kind of like it. And we have more work to do with making this our own place, so it'll just get better. 

Our director told us a few days ago that she wants to find a new place for us in a few months. I haven't really decided how I feel about that yet. It took a lot of work to clean this place up. And it's big. And right next to the river. And theres room out front for me to build a small rowing dinghy out of plywood...

...wait. I'll tell you about that another day (when I figure out where to buy plywood in this country...it's hard!)

-N