My Apartment

I live in the Jungno Apartment complex in Hwi Kyung in Seoul. I live on the twelfth floor but all I can really see are the identical apartment buildings across the sidewalk and gardens. I can see some lights from the shopping area and part of a mountain if I look closely. My apartment is definitely not as nice as other peoples' apartments, but the size is bigger than most of them and the location is more central, and I would rather compromise quality for closeness to the center of the city. I really like my apartment, actually, and the only thing I would change about it is the floor. Why does it have to be yellow linoleum with yellow-orange flecks? It's kind of gross, but I'm getting used to it.

Right inside my front door is a tiny room separated from the main room with glass sliding doors where you keep your shoes. It is probably the nicest part of my apartment. The doors are really nice and the floor is like brand new, and there is a reproduction van Gogh on the wall.


Almost everything is in my main room: bed, desk, TV, closets, and refrigerator and microwave.




The kitchen is separated from the main room with two really big sliding doors. I don't have a picture yet but in there are cabinets, a sink, and a stove top. My washing machine is also here as well as my air conditioner and my humongous drying rack. Fact: Korean people don't really use clothes driers. I have no idea why. Oftentimes you will see big drying racks full of towels on the street outside of places like hair salons.

Last of all is my bathroom! It's small but nice. My toilet made a horribly annoying sound for the first two weeks I lived here. It sounded like there was always water dripping down its pipes. I called over my landlady (my apartment is actually part of their apartment that they rent out- you can see a door covered in cardboard and tape in the picture of the main room which connects to their apartment) because I was worried that it was driving up my electricity bill. She speaks a little English- definitely more than I speak Korean- and our conversation consisted of me pointing to the toilet and saying "Soh-ri!" which means "noise" in Korean and her saying "Because 12" which means "Your toilet is making that strange and annoying sound because of the water pressure on the twelfth floor". So I figured I would just have to deal with the noise, even though it sometimes woke me up at night. Then two days ago I came home from work and kind of freaked out because some stuff in my bathroom was not where I left it and I thought someone had been in my apartment but it was just my landlady and a plumber. Now the toilet no longer makes a soh-ri and I am happy.


So even though my apartment doesn't have a loft bedroom or a big kitchen or hardwood floors or some of the nicer amenities that my friends' apartments have, it's big and has a great location. The floor is gross but it could be worse!