Ben got to Korea a week before I did and boy, was he busy during that week! He was able to purchase a car and an apartment before I even got here, all while inprocessing - jet-lagged. He's pretty amazing. So he was very excited to show me the results of his hard work:
Our apartment is brand new, with all sorts of upgrades. And it's only a 20-minute walk (5-minute drive) from everything we use on base. We live in the beautiful Korean countryside.
Our neighborhood.
Aren't the fields so pretty?
Korean cows!
More 'wildlife'. The golden banana spiders are EVERYWHERE, but usually only in undisturbed areas, like bushes and trees. They're about the size of your palm, including legs. I had nightmares the first night!
Down the street from our place, there's a kids park called Joyland. Fun!
I absolutely LOVE our apartment. It came furnished - good because our shipment only allowed for the essentials. These pictures are from the day we moved in. I especially love the floors.
The master bedroom came with a bed and wardrobe (there are no closets). That isn't a box springs; that's the mattress. And a pretty nice one for Korean standards. I think they sleep on the floor, so a 'mattress' is a luxury. But it was beyond hard! We slept 2 nights on it before buying a Serta mattress from the BX.
Our place is a 3 bedroom/2 bath and both the bathrooms are wonderful! The master has this amazing shower.
The second bathroom has a big, deep tub. Heaven!
The only tough part of our new place is the electronics. Everything is pretty high-tech, to me at least, but the hard part is the Korean-only instructions and labels - very little English. This is our thermostat for the apartment heat and water heater. Luckily, we got a brief lesson from the realtor.
The washing machine became my project. After 4 or 5 days of searching the internet, I finally found the owners manual in English. Now we can do laundry with confidence!
There is so much to take in and I'm sure most of my posts will be culture-shock related. But we really love it here so far. The people are amazing and appreciate my few terrible Korean words. Everyday is an adventure!
5 comments:
I love, LOVE it! What an adventure! oxo
Those floors look fabulous, and everything is so interesting. I've never been anywhere, really, so I'm living vicariously through you. Of course, with 3 kids I don't know that I would be up for the adventure at this point. Get as much out of this fantastic experience as you can, and eat some bulgogi, kimbap and kimchi for me!!!!
I love the apt. So cute. However, I'm seriously rethinking my decision to come visit because that spider will haunt my dreams as well!!!
Awesome! I am all caught up with your recents posts, and I all I can say is that it looks like you guys will have an awesome experince there!!! The apartment looks great - everything looks cool - except those banana spiders :).
Cute Place! I love it. I hope you guys have so much fun! I am jealous! :)
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