Our Apartment and Neighbourhood

Lisa and I have a pretty sweet place just outside of Seoul. It’s very close to the school and you can find almost anything within a few minute’s walk. In the lobby of our building is a Family Mart convenience store open 24 hours. There are tons of brand name stores in the neighbourhood like Nike, Adidas, and Asics. There is McDonalds, KFC, 7-Eleven, Dominos Pizza, Pizza Hut, Krispy Kream, and more within 5 minutes. There is an E-mart, like a Wal-Mart across the street from our building. We can get all our groceries there and a bunch of other stuff too pretty cheap. The main street, Rodeo Drive, is a pedestrian street and only a block from our place. There is also 3 other large department stores, lots of Korean restaurants (tons with Korean bbq), a movie theatre, hair places, cell phone stores, travel agencies, a post office, etc. all right around our place.

It’s really easy to get around from our place too. Most of the stuff is within walking distance. The subway station is really close too, and we’re right on line 3, the orange line. There is a bigger satellite city 3 stops away with Costco, Subway, the hospital, and a bunch more shopping, bars and restaurants. We go there for drinks every week with the other foreign teachers. Seoul is about 30 minutes away on the trains, which come about every 5 minutes. It only costs about a dollar to go anywhere on the subway too. There is a long-distance bus station literally beside our building, so we’ll have to check that out too.

When we first signed the contract for the school, we were told we were getting a couple’s apartment. However, when they were doing the interviews over the phone, they did stress how apartments in Korea are smaller than back in North America. They were definitely being serious. Our place is pretty tiny. All the other single foreign teachers have the same size place. We live in a pretty modern building, but all the units are bachelor’s apartments. Sometimes it feels like Res since all of the other foreign teachers are in the building too. We have basically one big room. There is a kitchen, living room area, desk and a bed. The bathroom is really nice with a stand up shower and glass doors, and a toilet. These things are rare in Korea. We live in a pretty modern building. The apartment is really nice, even though it’s small, which helps. We have a pretty fast internet, we finally got cable, and even our doorbell has video which we can watch inside if someone rings it from the hall. We updated the couch left for us from the dumpster, but it’s a pretty nice find. Normally I would be opposed to finding furniture in the trash, but here it just seems okay and not as sketchy. It’s sometimes hard if one person wants to go to sleep and another doesn’t, but we’re getting used to it. When we move back home, a one bedroom is going to seem huge.