6-month Update

Yesterday, Monday April 25, marked exactly 6 months since we arrived in Korea, hooray! And, a lot has happened recently. Two weeks ago we moved into a new apartment after we found out that everyone had to move out of our old building because the electrical wasn't installed to code. We were suppose to move into a temporary apartment for one month while they renovated and then move back into our old place, but because the temp apt. was 10 minutes further away from our school, was basically an attic, and would require two moves, our director decided that just moving to a whole new apartment was best. It was a bit stressful when we got the news, because it came to us less than 24 hours before we would be leaving for Seoul, and we were told we had to move out over the weekend. Here's what the temporary apt. looked like that we turned down (notice the extremely low sloping ceiling and incompleteness):

But here's what our new apartment looks like (Click here if you don't remember what the old apt. looked like):

After entering through the front door, directly in front of you is the bedroom with the kitchen to the left and living / dining area to the back left. To the right is the bathroom.

Bedroom - Took 2 hours to clean that window the first day we moved in. One of the best parts of our new place is that new TV: it's flat, HD, and I can plug my laptop into it when we want to watch movies!

Another great thing about our new place is the size of the wardrobe. It must have 2-3x the amount of storage we had in our old wardrobe, very nice :) Unfortunately it makes the bedroom much smaller.

The amount of space between the bed and wardrobe, TV stand, and wall is very small. This is the most space shown here; it's even less at the end of the bed and on Amanda's side next to the window.

We used our couch to separate the kitchen and living room and to also allow the chairs to fit around the table and be used at the same time. Unfortunately, there's not much space between the wall and couch (15" to be exact).

The table sits next the the sliding glass doors that lead into the laundry room.

After cleaning one set of the sliding doors for a few hours, some nice light shines into the living room and illuminates our beautiful pink flower wall paper, which is new by the way. Apparently it's common for this type of wall paper to be installed for young "honeymoon"-like couples such as ourselves. I was most disappointed when I found out it was new and there would be no chance of replacing it.

Here you can see the relation between the front door and bathroom, as well as the fridge to the right and a slice of the bedroom door on the left. If you're wondering where we picked that mirror up - we got it off the street :)

We scrubbed every surface of the bathroom for about 2 1/2 hours after we moved in, but it still looks dirty close up... There's not much room between the sink and toilet, but to the left is roughly the same amount of space that's shown, that we use for showering. The shower head attaches to the sink faucet, which is that silver hose running to it from the left of the photo.

View of the bathroom, bedroom and shoe closet from the kitchen.

Sadly, the new kitchen leaves much to be desired. Especially counter tops. So, we decided to use our small black table as preparation space for the kitchen so we could actually cook. 

And here's the kitchen in all its glory. It's certainly not my dream kitchen, but it'll do. We actually like the new gas range better than our old one even though it looks like it's from the 80's, because the burners are side-by-side instead of one-in-front-of-the-other, and we can regulate the gas much more finely.

So that's what our new place looks like. Also worth noting is thanks to our friend Kang, I would not be able to write this post view WiFi. After three visits to our apartment by him and his brother, and hours of fiddling with our wireless router and cable internet modem, we finally resolved our no-wifi woes after Kang gave us the router out of his home. He took ours and put it in his office, and put his office router in his home. So when we leave we'll swap them all back, but much thanks goes out to Kang for all of his efforts to fix our router and then for loaning us his. Here's what Kang's fancy router looks like:

What else is new you ask? Well, not this past weekend but the weekend before we visited Gimhae and spent the day with our Korean coworker, Iris. She lives there and brought us to the annual Gaya Festival, a museum, and an observatory from which we gazed at several stars, and Saturn!

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL MY PHOTOS.

Iris looking through a medium-sized telescope at the moon.

Iris' father, Iris, Amanda, and me.

That weekend we also went to a mountain called 10,000 Fish Mountain with Kang and his family. It got it's name because the top of the mountain is covered with thousands of rocks that as legend goes, were once 5 female devils and a black dragon that performed evil deeds and thus, were turned into rock.

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL MY PHOTOS.

ALSO, we both got new glasses! :) What do you think? Amanda's only cost about $15, and mine were about $55, that's including, frames, lenses and exam!

Lastly, being that this post has already reached extreme lengths, I will show you the Easter dinner we made this past Sunday. It was a delicious meal of ham, mashed potatoes, corn and CHEESECAKE! yum yum yum

HAPPY BELATED EASTER!

Oh wait, one more thing! Besides moving, visiting Seoul, getting new glasses, cooking Easter meals, stargazing and climbing mountains, we also work, too! And, starting at the end of this month we decided to award 3 students for "Students of the Month" at our school. This month we chose Robin, Beth, and Jennifer:

We are hoping that this monthly award will encourage our students to continue trying hard; I'll let you know how it goes :)