Americatown and dealing with Korea

We live only two blocks away from the main strip called the foreign district or Iteawon. It's shockingly quiet at the apartment considering our location. But we noticed something as we were walking to dinner the other night:

we live in Chinatown, if Chinatown was for Americans in another country.

Koreans come to the foreign district to shop and eat at places that have "American" style food, or also food from different parts of Europe. And all the stores are mid to high priced American brands like Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, etc. So if you've ever wondered what Chinatown feels like to a Chinese person, I can tell you. It's not recognizable as home at all. I didn't realize that Iteawon was trying to be American until Justin pointed it out. Now the Burger King, Outback Steak House, Baskin Robbins and Starbucks make sense.

We love our apartment. But there are a few things we're still figuring out. The floor heating is literally heated water moving in pipes under the floor boards and the heat comes up through the floor, there are no air vents or grates in the floor. It's really great, but it takes a few hours for a temperature change to register, so if you're cold now, it's gonna be a while. At least if it's too hot we can open the windows. On the plus side there's no such thing as a cold winter floor (if you do it right).

To go around some of the electrical issues, we just bought a Korean 220v toaster and microwave. They're pretty easy to use, they just have numbers. So at least nothing in the kitchen is going to blow up. Except maybe the leaking dishwasher.

The tap water tastes a little like sulphur, Justin says he doesn't notice, but we have those giant plastic water bottles delivered for our water cooler so it's okay.

Also Justin explained why it smells so, so bad outside occasionally, they don't have S pipes for the sewers so the smell comes up especially in the city.

In the apartment there is one whole bedroom we don't have anything in, we just keep that door closed. It was a little weird at first, but honestly, I forget it's there most of the time. It's such an opposite problem from what I usually have, too much space.

The whole confusing trash thing is basically the same as California (garbage, recycling, and bio/food waste) but you have to use special bags that are about the size of an American grocery store bag and we haven't found out where to buy them yet... My friend Ceci drove me to base with huge black trash bags full of our trash and boxes from all our new stuff. I felt like such an American stereotype.

This past Saturday night we had to fill my rolling suitcase and walk to base to do laundry in his barracks. The washer and dryer are Korean (the landlord didn't want to move them out, so we couldn't get American ones from the army) but we're pretty sure the dryer is broken. It's an electric condensing dryer so it works differently, but after four runs and it's inability to dry one damp kitchen towel, we're positive it's not us. At least we got our clothes and sheets washed on base though.

That may sound like a lot of things going wrong, but I really don't notice them much. Justin and I have never really had our own place together until now, and it's such an exciting thing to talk to him Not on a computer. So, I'm enjoying the adventure and I'm enjoying being with Justin. I just wish I could wash my clothes and throw things away without thinking too hard.

also, good news the Army exchanged our little love seat for a real three seater sofa! yay! small victories.