Sweet Home South Korea

Welcome to our humble abode! We have finally received all of our belongings we shipped over from the states. Here is a tour of our new home sweet home in the ROK. 

Entryway: This first shot was taken from the inside as if you are about to leave our apartment. This is one of my favorite areas because 1. It has full length mirrors so I can check out how ridiculous I look with 20 layers of clothes on heading out into the crazy Korean cold weather; 2. It has shelving for all of the purses I plan to buy at the market (Don’t tell Adam); 3. The light is motion sensor  so I can catch Adam sneaking in at wee hours of the night. (Don’t tell Adam this either)

Koreans don’t wear shoes in the house. Training Adam on this was like pulling teeth but he eventually got the hang of it. Hopefully the new habit will transfer over to the US when we leave here. We keep our comfy house slippers by the door because of this, and also because I pledged the wooden floors without thinking and almost gave myself a concussion the first week here. Socks + Pledge = Bad Idea.

Moving on… Once you walk through the entryway, hang a quick right and you are now in my favorite room of the apartment, the living room. This photo was taken from the balcony.

And another shot…

We have Korean cable TV that has very few English channels so we basically live off our Netflix account. I may or may not have watched an entire season of the new Fuller House our first week here, but that is a different story.

Next up, the kitchen:

We LOVE our kitchen. (Please ignore our overflowing trashcan. We are only allowed to take out the trash in our special garbage bags between the hours of 8pm and 4am.)

Some interesting things about the kitchen:

1. The square you see on the fridge is actually a push box where we push it and it opens up to items on one shelf of the fridge. We keep our milk, a water bottle or two and Starbucks Coffee bottles here for easy access…and maybe Soju and a beer on the weekends. Don’t judge.
2. Our microwave, oven, stove and dishwasher are all in Korean. I just push buttons until something happens with the dishwasher. Luckily everything has looked clean so far and we haven’t had any cases of salmonella. The microwave is pretty simple. I just hit the blue button and it adds 30 seconds at a time. The oven is in Celsius and is gas. I told Adam I would make him dinner the first night here and had to wait for him to come home to help me turn it on and get the right temperature. I haven’t burnt anything yet, whoo hoo!
3. If you look under the small window, down to the right you will see our kimchi fridge. The power is off…I think. It is in Korean too so who knows. It will never get used. I will eat kimchi here and there at the Korean BBQ place but am not a huge fan. Basically kimchi is a side-dish of seasoned, fermented vegetables; usually cabbage, radishes, scallions or cucumbers. I prefer the cabbage.
4. If you look under our sink you will see a rectangular-looking object. This we tap with our foot and it turns on the water. You can also turn it on the normal way but if you have messy hands this helps.
5. Our laundry room door is just to the right of our kimchi fridge. This laundry machine is also in Korean and washes AND dries the laundry in the same machine. When we first tried working it we couldn’t understand why someone would need to dry their clothes for SEVEN hours and one minute. Unfortunately we found out that it does in fact take this long to dry our clothes. Our outdoor balcony hangers will be getting a lot more use than I expected because of this. 

Here is a view from our kitchen looking at our living room. We have a pretty sweet view, as you can see through the lovely haze Korea has 90 percent of the time. At least it finally stopped snowing.

We also have another balcony behind our couch. On that particular balcony we have our lifeline in case of an emergency.

The box only has one rope. This may cause some marital problems. Luckily I am a faster runner than Adam.

MASTER BEDROOM:

Our master bedroom is pretty simple. We absolutely LOVE the view! It looks pretty awesome at night with all of the neon signs.

Here is our master bathroom:

The toilet is quite advanced. There are buttons to wash the bum, dry the bum, heat the seats and other Korean buttons we haven’t quite figured out yet. There is also a call button on the wall to talk to someone at the front door and a button to unlock the door to let someone in while you are doing your business. Adam was testing all of these buttons our first night here and found out first hand what the water to the bum button does, letting out a big scream as soon as he pressed it. I think I’ll pass on that one. (SIDE NOTE: Our doorbell plays “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid. YES!)

Here is a quick view of part of our closet. Koreans sure do know how to build awesome storage places. There are so many neat shelves for jewelry, shoes, glasses and other nicknacks. I’m making sure to take note of everything so we can have something like this back in the US.

If you head out of the master bedroom and take an immediate left you will be in our hallway. The first stop on the right is spare bedroom number one. As you can see we have not done much with this room so far.

Across the hall you have our entry way which you saw earlier in the post. The guest bathroom is right next to the entryway on the left. Sorry guests, no bum sprayer on this one.

Across from the guest bathroom is our second spare bedroom, AKA the office. Again, nothing too extravagant.

At the end of the hallway you will find the third spare bedroom.

With all of this extra space, it is a great reason to come visit. Right, our loving family and friends?

And there you have it. Our home sweet home. Lots of space and not much furniture, but we are enjoying living life as minimalists. That is, until I start finding awesome deals on Korean furniture and stock this bad baby up with goodies to ship back to America. (Don’t tell Adam that part either)

Luckily I do have a job to contribute to these purchases. I teach English to four students ages 4-5 at a private academy in Dongtan. I love the people I work with and am so blessed to have found such an amazing opportunity here in Korea. Aren’t my kids the cutest?

 

Next weekend I venture out into the city of Seoul with some other ladies so my blog post will be a bit more interesting. Hope you all have a great week!

Until next time, -E.