Our Korean Apartment

Today is Veterans day. As I'm sure you have all heard of the Fort Hood shootings. Its such a surreal feeling to have just left there a month ago and now see all of this on the news and even in Korean newspapers! Fort Hood was a big part of Steve and my life and it will always have a spot in our hearts as "home." If you didn't know, Steve was stationed at Fort Hood for just shy of two years. I lived there with him for one year before we left for Korea. This whole mess felt like such a slap in the face. My heart truly goes out to the families of the fallen. I could get up on my soap box and rant about what the media is doing and how I truly feel...but its not necessary. I will just say I have no sympathy for the "harassed" Islamic extremist. This was an act of terror.

ANYWAY

We moved into our apartment FINALLY last Saturday. About 4 days ago. We moved into a set of apartment buildings called "Taesung Villa." We live on the second floor along with 3 other families who live in the building who we know through Steves unit. We've come to find that Taesung is relatively popular with the command sponsored families living offpost. We know some more soldiers and their families that live in the other buildings here.


Every building is ran by a different lanlord and managed by a lady named Miss Lee. Well I'm we're not completely sure if she manages or is just an agent that finds people to live in these apartments. Its all done a little different here than in the states. Every 5th of the month the tenants in our building meet our lanlord outside of the apartment on the bottom floor at 9am to pay rent.


Like I said we only moved in just about 4 days ago so not everything is complete. We bought our new couches and coffee table yesterday and our rugs today. The apartment comes fully furnished but we wanted to get our own couches. And it didn't have a coffee table. Bare with me though. We still have trashbags hanging around and rooms we have done nothing with. We also haven't decorated a bit so it looks pretty plain. But I just wanted to let everyone see what a Korean apartment might look like.

Door in kitchen leading to utility area/laundry room

Utility area

Laundry area. Very inconvenient not having a dryer. They say its too expensive. We are going to apply for one through housing once our sponsorship goes though.

Kitchen. The oven is so small you can't fit a regular sized baking sheet in there. The fridge is HUGE! Its samsung. When you leave the door open for too long it sings "Yankee Doodle." The black thing above the sink is a dish dryer. We don't use it. It seems like less work to just air dry them with the rack.

The glass sliding door behind is what takes you to the indoor balcony.

Light fixture

Guest bathroom

Random and tiny room that we have no idea what to do with. If we get a dog this might be his room. Or maybe a workout room. Notice the random sliding door and separate area. Very strange. The lamp was left from the previous renter. Free lamp!

Door leaving apartment going into foyer/taking off your shoes room.

Foyer/Where you take off your shoes. Front door to the right.

Shoe closet. You trade your shoes for house slippers. We figured we would stick to this Korean custom, because well...When in Rome. But also because the floors in here get dirty REALLY easy.

This is behind the sliding frosted glass door you see in the foyer. We aren't sure what this area is for but once Steve gets his random crap out we are planning on putting a coat stand in there.

The left side of the indoor balcony

The right side of the indoor balcony. Excuse all the moving garbage. We are a work in progress here.

Hose for Steve to wash his gear and whatever else.

Soon to be office. The couch you see is the one they had already in the apartment. Its as hard as a bench.

Looking into the master bathroom from our bedroom
My domain

The thermostat that also controls the water heating. Well, everything in the apartment is warmed by water. Water runs through the floors and heats up.

Korean electrical outlet

Hideous converter boxes we have to use

Master bath

Our bedroom. On the other side of the window is the right side of the indoor balcony.

Steve and I are still having alot of fun in Korea. Things have been pretty busy and its hard to get all the time we would like to go out and site see, but every free chance we have we sure do try. Tomorrow while Steve is at work I am going to downtown Daegu with some girls that live in Taesung Villa.

We just set our Magic Jack up tonight and it is up and ready to go. If you are interested in calling us from the states the phone number set up is a California local landline number. It is 925-954-5266.