Sheeting on the Bed? That’s Gross

I was promised a nice modern apartment (included with the job contract) and for the most part that is what I have got. First, the positives:

For one person, my apartment is MASSIVE. I was expecting a studio with onoe room for everything and a bathroom, like a glorified single, similar to what I had at Goucher College. Not even close. My apartment is about the size of five singles.

The bedroom itself is very large and cozy, but the apartment actually has three rooms: a bedroom, kitchen, and a workroom, which right now is acting more like a storeroom and closet (but a CLEAN one!- i have another closet where I put a bunch of useless and suspicious junk I found, more on that later). There’s also a bathroom, a large balcony (with a clothesline for drying) and a washroom (which is actually pretty gross but since it will only be used for washing clothes, whatever).

As the title suggests, my bed has two blankets but nothing else on top of it yet, except me sometimes. And my Mike Piazza doll.

The only room that leaves anything to be desired is the bathroom, which has a sporadically working sink and just a showerhead, with a hole in the ground, as opposed to an actual shower, but its a bathroom, and its clean enough, so I’m okay with that.

The tenant who left before me, also a Yale teacher because the school owns the apartment, left a bunch of useful things for me to use when I got there, including a vacuum cleaner, a few weeks worth of toilet paper, pops pans and cutlery, THREE pairs of sandals for walking around the apartment (instead of going barefoot) and also a bunch of reading material under the (broken) TV including a Tom Clancy novel which I won’t read and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Although my bed doesn’t have any sheets, there are some blankets and it is king-sized so I can roll around and put lots of crap like my laptop and my Mike Piazza doll on it and not have to worry about bumping into them at night.

There was also a heater which I mistook for a fan, but I figured that one out pretty quickly after turning it on. To keep the bedroom cool I need to keep the balcony door open, but I close 1/2 the curtains and there’s a screen so bugs haven’t been a problem.

In short, I’m assuming that an apartment of this quality would cost about 18 times as much in a comparable US city.

Now, the bad:

The previous tenant was lazy and left a bunch of useless and annoying things behind as well. The sandals have been usable but the kitchen cabinets were filled with 1/2 used and possibly months-old cooking supplies like oil and soy sauce which I’ve been too scared to touch.

They also left all their old toiletries; an assortment of creams which have since made their way to the garbage. There were four hand towels in the bathroom when I got there, two of which had weird stains so I got rid of those, and the other ones SEEM suspicious but I’m open minded and I haven’t found a good reason not to use them yet, so they stayed, although I did buy some new hand towels this week.

I’ve got some mold problems which will be dealt with soon. This is apparently a very common issue for foreigners during the summer. At least its not a problem in the bedroom. I have bleach and cleaning supplies (I think) which are waiting for the right moment for me to be proactive.

My apartment is on the fifth floor without an elevator which normally is fine but whenever I have to carry things up (like the first night) its a real pain, its very reminiscent of the apt in Barcelona, because in addition to the lack of elevator, it also has “smart” lights which turn off after about three seconds so especially at night its very dark walking up.

I still haven’t figured out where trash goes outside, when this becomes a problem that gets so bad as to make my situation unlivable I will actually try to figure where to put things. I’ve figured out where recyclables like plastic bottles go, but things that actually are disgusting, like bananas which I put in the fridge by accident, are still looking for a home. Once again, they are in a safe place both out of the bedroom and out of the general viewing public so someone could still possibly view my apartment without being horrified.

Despite the screen door, there are lots of loud noises outside almost all hours, but especially the early morning.

I am already hating the “melon trucks” which parade around Seogwipo. They have loudspeakers attached to them which constantly blast loud messages and sometimes really annoying songs. THe first time I heard them I freaked out because I thought it was an evacuation warning by the city, and I spent the next ten minutes on the balcony making sure traffic was going in both directions and people were acting “normally” so I could go back to bed. Once I figured out what they were, they were still annoying, and I’m 100% certain that even if I knew Korean, I would find these things irritating. Oh well.

I can use my kindle in my apartment fine but there’s currently no internet connection in there. There’s a phantom wireless connection called “ip time” which claims to have 2 bars but it doesn’t do anything when I use it. All the other connections are security enabled and I’ve tried typing 0000 in all of them, but these Koreans are smart. It’s a good thing I’m not addicted to internet porn, I guess.

Pretty soon I’m going to set up my camera, not only so I can take pictures of my apartment, but also the harbor area of Seogwipo, which is beautiful and includes a legitimate bridge to nowhere which puts the proposed Alaskan one to shame.

Also, now that the rain has cleared, I’ve finally gotten good views of Hallasan on my way to work (my apartment balcony has a lovely view…of the rest of the apartment complex).

The volcano basically takes up the entirey northern landscape. It is a real volcano. Big enough to be impressed by it even when I’m teaching and can see it out the window. Big enough to make me think I’ll need to get in better shape before I try to climb it. Big enough to be the referenced in a blog titled AARON VS THE VOLCANO.

Top picture: the rotary near the school looking south; if you look closely you can see the Dunkin Donuts on the left corner of the street (but the right of the picture). The Dunkin lettering is orange and the Donuts lettering is pink.

Bottom picture: looking north at Yale Foreign Language Academy with the mountain in the background. This is a wintertime photo, there is no snow on the mountain currently.Yale is the building which says “English” in the very far left side of the picture. Those grumpy people you can’t see behind the window are my seventh-grade students.