Well, it looks like I'll be spending another year in my apartment. I would have liked someplace closer to a subway station, but it's OK. I've recently been reorganizing my cabinets and closets and changing around the position of the furniture in my room and stuff in my kitchen, and I'm enjoying living in my apartment a lot more 'these days.' Plus, although I have some awkward encounters with my neighbors who own my apartment (one of them is my student,) it's nice having people who are super-helpful and speak a little English next door. One time my toilet was broken, and the father personally fixed it for free. When I first moved in, I asked the mother where the "air con" was and the next day, I came home from work to find her and a maintenance guy installing it in my room, free of charge. Sometimes she gives me tomatoes and oranges.
The main room. I hate that yellow floor.
The corner with my bed. It is adjacent to the boarded-up door which leads to my neighbors' apartment.
Desk corner. Looks junky. The furniture doesn't match but i'm not going to spend money buying new stuff, or a new TV. I have free cable and internet, thanks neighbors!
The kitchen.
The foyer room, where I keep my shoes, stuff I need to grab for work in the morning (like my Tokyo Pokemon Center Pokemon travel mug) and my children's vitamin gummy bears (for those of us who are too afraid to swallow real medicine.)
Bathroom. Same as before, although I recently bought a nice fluffy blue towel at Costco. No separate shower room- the whole bathroom is the shower. This is an Asian thing. I have to clean it very frequently because of all the mold that builds up.
I have 3.5 closets in my apartment, which I think is my favorite feature of this place. This is 1 closet. It is bigger than lots of my friends' closets, and I have more than 3 of them!
Cute kitchen mat from Daiso, a Korean and Japanese dollar store
Cute Rabbit Dog trash can, also from Daiso
My refrigerator... not sure what is going on here.
My desk chair cushion.
Stuff on top of my bookcase: Big Bang calendar, Big Bang concert lightstick, "You're Beautiful" Korean TV show rabbit bear, a keychain of some guy from 2PM a student made and gave me, a ton of earrings, Pokemon stuff from Tokyo, an old Rilakkuma jingle bell cell phone charm, and pressed pennies from the Pokemon Center in Tokyo and the 63 Building in Seoul. IS IT JUST ME OR IS MY BEDROOM LIKE A 7-YEAR-OLD'S??? Why do I have so much Pokemon stuff?!
Some DVDs my family sent me, some books I brought from home and some Kurt Vonnegut books I bought from another foreign teacher here, a book on Korean culture which Jae Hyun informs me is full of lies, a YG Family notebook, and assorted CDs I bought (2NE1, GD&TOP, Big Bang Special Edition and Seungri's mini album)
Pencil cup, overflowing with Big Bang.
Above my desk: pictures with family and friends, pictures students drew of me, a subway map, and assorted Polaroids (me at Lotte World and Insadong in Seoul and the Meiji Shrine and Akihabara in Tokyo; me and Jae Hyun in Hongdae; and me and some people at a Ho Bar)
The ugly, dirty corner of my kitchen, which has an unreachable thick layer of black mold on the walls. I love having my own washer and dryer. Please appreciate the makeshift table I made out of an upside-down box of Cheddar Cheese Combos that I used to carry stuff home from Costco last time. And the pink curtain I created using tape and the wrapping fabric of a box of oranges my school gave me. RESOURCEFULNESS.
