My appartment is really a room, but it's an amazing room. Through some amazing enginuity and Korean elbow greace they've managed to fit a kitchen, bedroom, living room and laundry room into about 15 square feet. The blessing of it all is that they added a separate room for the bathroom.
The walls are papered in a bland grey, the color of cement. I discovered this morning, while attempting to hang my calendar, that under the drab paper the walls are made of cement. I'm so glad they covered up that pale grey color for me.
Another funny thing, my appartment isn't only 15 square feet, I beleive it's probably 15 cubed feet. I don't know why the ceilings are so high, because the people here could probably live very comfortably with six foot high ceilings. I can only assume that they had the appartment especially fitted out with me in mind, knowing that westerners are so tall. And thank heavens. If the ceilings were any lower I may not be able to clone myself and stand on my own shoulders with room to spare.
As you've probably noted already, the shower has no door. It's just a nook in my bathroom with a shower head on the wall and a drain on the floor. There's another drain at the other side of the bathroom too. At first I was quite distraught at the water pouring across my bathroom floor and tried to find a way to prevent it. One of the other teachers assures me that it's supposed to be that way, though. He also explained why it's such a great system. Since the bathroom is designed for getting soaked, when it's cleaning time he just sprays everything down with a cleanser, then scours it off with his showerhead. This is something I'm looking forward to trying.
Anyhow, I had my first day of class yesterday, but I wasn't teaching (thank heavens.) There are four new teachers and we each observed our classes as they were taught by more experienced teachers. We'll observe again on Monday and then we take over on Tuesday.
One of the other teachers, Mary Miller of Boston, came in on the same flight as I did and lives one floor above me. We've been sticking together so far, and that's been nice. For one thing, the smallest package of toilet paper we could find at E-Mart last night was and 18 pack, so we decided to split it. Also, she knows how to say 'thank you' in Korean and I know how to say 'hello' so between the two of us we can pull off a semblence of polite.
Anyhow, we spent the morning exploring the city and I think we're going to do some shopping now. I also have to figure out where church is.
Love to all!
Denice
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