The new 'box' is kind of nice... (Jo)

I should start off by saying that the new place is an actual apartment and not a box.
* I will describe it later in the post.*

We packed for 3 days trying to sort through 4 years of junk that teachers had left behind and finally narrowed it down to the things that we do or actually will use. They sent us a flatbed truck and were shocked when all of our things wouldn't fit on it. The truckbed was about 6x8 feet. Now keep in mind that we have a double bed, queen sized bed, fridge(which had been growing mildew for who knows how long. When we moved in it was already taped shut, and we used the built in one in the kitchen.It took lots of bleach inside and serious scrubbing outside to look usable again), a washing machine(also a spare from the last place that we'd never used) a full sized couch and chair, plus everything you'd need for a kitchen, and our clothes. They were amazed at the amount of luggage that we had. (D'oh, why oh why did I have to go and pack so much? Who needs clean underwear anyway?)

They got us a second truck and everything was bundled up and ready to go. At the new place, we're on the 4th floor, they had an ' L truck' where you load things on a platform that is extended up to a window in your apt where you unload things and then send it down again. It took approximately 30 minutes to get everything into our new place. With an elevator it took us over 2 hours to get everything out of the first place. Lucas and I were very impressed. I personally was very scared for the man who whizzed up up the platform that rocketed it's way up and down, but he seemed unphased.

The new place is just that,new. They were still hooking up electrical outlets while we moved in. There was no phone, Internet, missing power ares and most importantly NO GAS when we moved in. We started our day at 8:30 to finish packing, the movers arrived half an hour late at 10:30, from 10:30 on we were in the cold moving boxes down to the trucks and unloading them again at the new place. We finished unloading and said goodbye to the movers at 1:30, so for 3 hours we'd already been in the cold, yesterday's high was -1, then we got to wait another 3 hours in our frigid apt. until they hooked up the gas. It had actually snowed for the first time in Pohang as we waited for the gasman to come,which he eventually did. YAY! We have heat! ...Oh, right, we have ondol heat, hot water travels through the floor to heat our apt. but the water needs to be hot first, hmmmm...I see a problem here... Ice cold water in our ice cold floor needed to be heated before we would actually feel anything. It was still very chilly when we went to bed, but at least we couldn't see our breath anymore. When we woke up, the floor, and the apartment were a comfortably warm temperature.

We're making a foray to E-mart to get food and a few cabinets as there are no closets in the rooms and not much space for food outside of the fridge, and anything else that might pop into our heads. Lucas is getting a wireless router so he can play his games anywhere he chooses, and I don't have to watch him play 'the game' for many, many hours at a time.

I'll post pictures once again as soon as Lucas debugs the memory card for the camera,

but here's a description to hold you over until then. You walk in to a small entrance way/mudroom, with 2 closets for shoes or maybe outdoor gear. The shelves are too close together for anything else(this is perhaps 4x6 feet). Then there is our second door leading to the interior of our new home. Directly in front of you is the bathroom door. To the right is one bedroom door and to the left it opens into the open concept Kitchen/living room. The bathroom has a wall shower again, so the whole floor will get wet every time we take a shower, but the bathroom is big enough that we won't have to hide to toilet paper each time, as with our first tiny box,( a lesson that we learned very quickly).

The first room is rectangular with a window and measures about 9x12 or 13 so its rather big.

The main bedroom for some reason has the apartment's only air conditioner, so I guess anyone in the other bedroom would just have to sweat it out in the summer and the door to the A/C'ed room would have to be kept open to cool the living room. A silly design in our opinion, but Koreans seem to lack planning capabilities. The kitchen layout is quite wonky too, but I digress. The two rooms have pretty much the exact same amount of space, the only real difference is that the 'main' bedroom has the air conditioner and is wider, rather than long.

There is a laundry room off to the side of the kitchen which has a door (very nice) and the water heating box (Korea doesn't have those large water heater tanks, they heat water on demand, it works rather well, but it means that you have to run your water for maybe 2 minutes before it starts getting hot) But it has enough space for the unsightly elements of a house (vacuum and laundry racks etc)

Overall, the apartment is very good, now that everything is finished and hooked up. The building managers here were very helpful yesterday when we had all the problems and they got things fixed in a matter of hours which was great. We'll find out in a month or so if we will get to go back to Adelia when the other 3 bedroom apartment opens up or if we will finish the remainder of term here, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if we do have to stay.