Vacation and The Hunt for a New Apartment (is easy if you know the right people)

Last week, I celebrated the one year anniversary of my arrival in Korea. It didn't seem like such a bit deal. I was actually on a trip with my choir. We slept at an abandoned elementary school, ate some of the most delicious food I've had while in Korea (Chicken soup with a whole chicken for each person that is stuffed full of rice. The broth was made with ginger root. It's a traditional summer dish.), drank a lot, played games, and relaxed on the beach with beer and watermelon. MyungSoo came too. The next day, we stopped at a local parish for a wonderfully simple and beautiful Mass (the church was so small that the 30 or so members of the choir filled half of it), we ate soft tofu soup, and then MyungSoo and I hung out at the beach with his older brother, JeongSoo. The East Sea (sometimes known as the Sea of Japan) is incredibly calm and relaxing, and the weather was perfect. At the end of the day, we ate blood sausage soup at a restaurant famous for that dish (with good reason), and then spent the next three hours battling our way through traffic. Korea has a serious traffic problem. I want you to know that.

But it was all worth it for this soup.

Creepy school hallway. It made a surprisingly good hotel, but it was still scary at night.

Luscious, green rice fields and mountains, the number one reason why I love Korea.

Maybe I should mention the oddity that is a Korean rest-stop. Most of them are just places by the side of the road with an sometimes inexplicably clean bathroom (seriously, one of them smelled like perfume and had soft jazz playing in all of the stalls). Then there are the mega stops, the stops where hundreds of cars vie for parking spots, where travelers line up for fried snacks, dried squid, coffee, and the ever-popular hotdog, where adjusshis sell electronic toys for kids, and where adjummas set up stalls that sell useless trinkets and pop music from the 70s. The bathroom lines aren't actually that long, simply because of the sheer number of stalls, but half of those stalls contain squat toilets. The Korean rest-stop is a both a terrifying and entertaining place. You never know what you're going to see there. Anyway, on to the good news.

I'm going to spend another year in Korea. Basically, this place is awesome. I'll be taking a vacation for a month or two and coming stateside in the winter, though, so if you have an urgent need to see my face, I'll be around.

Anyway, with a new year comes a lot of changes. First of all, it means a new contract and hopefully more responsibilities at work. However, the biggest change will be my apartment. The one I live in right now is pretty okay. It has everything I need. It's also super expensive (because it's in Gangnam) and a ten-fifteen minute walk from the subway station. So even though I live close to work, my commute time is depressingly long and involves trekking through bitter cold or crushing heat. Plus, it takes an hour on the bus to get from Gangnam to where MyungSoo lives.

I've never really looked for an apartment before. The last time, when I first arrived in Korea, was basically the worst apartment-hunting experience ever. It involved myself and two other new employees squeezing into a tiny car with one of the Korean staffers from our office (but whom we believed was a realtor) and driving off to meet some other guys. These guys all babbled away in Korean, talking about mysterious things, with no one bothering to translate. Imagine, if you will, three confused white girls trailing behind three, sometimes four middle-aged Korean guys while they discuss each apartment. Exchanges went something like this:
"So what is the price?"
"Price?"
"Rent fee."
"Rent fee is 800,000 won. But you get discount because American. Japanese I charge extra."
"Okay...So what is the rent?"
"750,000 a month. Very good deal."
"Does that include utilities?"
"What?"
"Does that include gas, electric, and water?"
*Koreans talking together for several minutes*
"Okay, let's go! Very good deal! Next apartment!"

It only got worse when our guide (who we soon realized was not a qualified realtor at all, but merely an escort sent by our office) said he had other things he had to do and left us alone with two middle-aged Korean men who barely spoke English. The one guy kept talking about paying a realtor fee (but he wasn't a realtor), while the other guy kept showing apartments that were way too expensive. In the end, I got frustrated and took the one that didn't smell as strongly of mold and cigarettes. Actually, it turned out to be a pretty good choice at the time. However, I have now outgrown the needs of this place. Plus, my landlord's unhealthy obsession with CCTV kind of bothers me. There is a point when security becomes excessive, and he reached that long ago. On the way from the door to my room on the third floor, there are eleven cameras. He also has a bad habit of verbally abusing Korean visitors.

When it came time to look for a new apartment, I was, naturally, a bit nervous. I started my search on Craigslist, but soon discovered that almost every apartment offered was for foreigners only and located in either Hongdae, Gangnam, or Itaewon, all three of which are expensive places to live. Well, Itaewon isn't expensive, but it's also a miniature version of every dirty, American city, where the scum of the foreign community tend to congregate. It's the only place in Seoul where I actually feel afraid to walk alone at night. Plus, every entry on Craiglist looked like this: *~*~*$$CHEAP APARTMENT GANGNAM NOT A SCAM!!$$*~*~*~

God bless sweet, Korean women. MyungSoo's mother has a realtor friend. When she found out I was looking for a new apartment, she called her friend immediately and sent her on the hunt. It only took a few days before she was ready to show me around. MyungSoo came too in order to give advice and to translate. Magically, the apartment-hunting process went from a horribly stressful affair to the easiest experience ever. The realtor did all of the haggling, and she was very good at it. After she complained that one apartment wasn't good enough, the owner tracked us down on the street and breathlessly admitted she would lower the price by over 100,000 won. In the end, she found me the perfect apartment. Okay, it's almost perfect. It's the size of a closet, and, instead of buying a bed, I'm going to invest in a Korean-style bed that rolls up at the end of the night because there isn't room for much else. But besides that, I love it. It's 30 seconds away from the subway and bus stops, there's no creepy landlord, it's fully furnished, and it doesn't smell bad. I also like that it's in a real Korean neighborhood, complete with gangs of old people relaxing on the sidewalk, selling the contents of their rooftop gardens.
 
One more story. MyungSoo and I went to Mass for the Assumption last Thursday. August 15th is also Korean Independence Day, the day they became free from Japanese rule. Therefore, when we went to Mass, the church was adorned with two giant Korean flags on either side of the altar. The bishop's homily was about reunification, and the closing hymn was the national anthem (which everyone sang so loudly and beautifully that I got a little bit emotional). It was quite an interesting experience.

Mary loves Korea!