...for the masses

So I climbed out of shell of an apartment to write about the goings on, but it was really to long so I had to delete it. Instead, I will give it to you in stages. About once everyday or two days, a new post will happen that I will already have written about what is happening and my internal dialoge.

This first one will be a 2 parter since they are small parts each:

Since being on vacation, I have very little contact with the public and no contact with english speakers, so that tends to lead to massive internal conversations. Let us start with laundry:

Yes, laundry. I have been here for over a month now have not had any soap to put in my laundry. All I have been doing is throwing them into the washer and then airdry. On the first day I did go shopping with my boss and tolfd him I need laundry soap...he got me a Korean fabreeze of some sort, which I didn't know until I tried to use with my laundry the first time. So I went looking for soap before the next load...I thought I found it. No, it is fabic softener. So finally, after a month of looking around my nearest Super Market (which about the size of two of classrooms, see pics) I found laundry soap, and can't wait to use it. Not only is it hot here but up until now it rained a lot. Well, not so bad but the hard part is drying off any one of the 3 towels i have, all of which have my man stink on them. Yeah, rub that in face for a month and see how excited you will feel at just a little soap. Now, you may be wondering why I didn't find it until now, so was I. I reasoned that I skipped in repeatedly because it is next to the dishwasher soap, and me having no dishwasher, simply walked on by. Now, you may be asking why I didn't use just some other soap. Well, if you must know. I get very timid when trying something that works on one thing (i.e. dish soap) on something it isn't designed for (i.e. for laundry). I don't want a degreaser on my clothes and have no idea what it would do to them. So I beared with the smell of my stink for awhile. I did come really close to using the dish soap, though. I was doing dishes one day, and I caught a whiff of the soap; it smelled of oranges. Well, I happen to like that smell and thought maybe... I would have done it too, but everytime I tried to do laundry, someone else's crap was in the machine. Though a very (very) small building. It holds a lot of people and only one machine.

So, let's move on to my building. My building is three floors and 8 apartments (according to the mail boxes). There are 2 rooms on the ground floor...maybe. There are 2 front doors almost right next to each other but only one back door...anyway. In front of both apartments is parking, which is being used for lawn chairs and sitting outside in the shade. Why shade? Well in the place of where 2 more apartment would go is where the parking is, so it is covered parking. It could fit (according to the way Koreas drive and park) maybe 4 cars. Well, only 2 are ever there cause they like to take up space apperently (we will get to my problems with there culture in other posts).

Second floor: 5 apartments. My floor, and I believe I have the smallest room, which is fine cause there is only me. It is a studio apartment. One small room, big window, actaully a nice sized bathroom/shower, 2 top stove, mini-fridge, some sort of wood box probably just a stand of a TV, and couple of movable cloests: one big, one small. I still don't have a bed. Anyway, two more rooms on my side of the hallway and 2 on the other. My side is above the 2 apartments on the ground floor. And I am right next to the stairs. At the end of the hall is the washer and a water purifer/water cooler. I fill large bottles of water here. The third floor.

Well, if you count that means there is only 1 room left (according to mail boxes). The super lives up there. And it takes up the entire 3 floor.

A couple cool things. My place is easy to clean, the AC has little work to do in order to cool it down, and the heater...let me explain this:

There are no vents in my place. No ventilation what so ever. The AC is a wall unit, with a tube to window link to a small fan system outside. The heater, many asian heating systems are like this. The heater IS the floor. when you turn on the heat, the floor heats up, in turn heating up the room, kinda like being in a large oven. I tried it out one day (a cool day). It is kinda like going to the beach. I walk around like I'm hot sand. What you are suppose to do is heat the place up when you are out and then turn it off when you get home and let it...or you...simmer. Kinda cool. Really dries my laundry when I lay it out :)

This is getting to much so I'll cut it short.

I'll mention one bad thing for now. The fridge. Apparently it doesn't like to keep things frozen. I bought some ice cream the other and it melted in the fridge and oozed everywhere. So, I cranked the temp down and did it again. It melted again. But only oozed in the freezer this time and froze to the freezer. the ice cream melted...oh, and seperated...yeah, no more Ice cream for me.

I'll leave with that.