Seoul's got us, but we got Seoul

Sorry it's been so long since I've blogged. Let's see what I've been up to:

On June 27 at about 18:30 Barb and I left Gumi with all our belongings and headed off for Seoul. It was good timing as Rob showed up at Ryan's house the previous evening. He was gracious enough to let us stay in his room for the final day. Rob arrived on the day that he had always intended to, but in true Korean fashion his boss thought he was coming earlier. Earlier in the day Barb and I had to go to our friends' house (Tracey from South Africa and Corey from Banff). Corey was babysitting our mountain bikes for us. We then rode our bikes back to Ryan's in the pouring rain - fun! The moving guy showed up at Ryan's around 17:30. He was supposed to come at 10:00 in the morning. Then John called us to tell us it would be at 16:00 (John's like that). Then he showed up at 18:00. We did, however, manage to get a ride to Seoul with the moving guy, saving us bus fare. We got all our belongings into the truck. We came to Korea with one suitcase each, plus our bikes. I don't know where we accumulated enough stuff to fill a pickup truck, but we did. Partially due to the fact that we had nothing in our apartment and had to buy it all - stupid b**** Jane. The ride to Seoul was uneventful - Barb and I crammed into the cab of a pickup with a Korean driver who knew no English.

We arrived in Seoul around 21:30. We went to the school first. We waited there for about 15 minutes. I'm not sure what we were waiting for, as the driver couldn't tell us. We eventually got back in the vehicle and drove about 5 minutes away from the school. We drove through a downtownish neighbourhood and up a hill. We stopped in front of a row of store-front buildings. When we got out of the vehicle we saw Mr. Kim, the Director of our new school standing there. The buildings around us looked a little slumy so we were quite worried. He pointed to a stairway tucked behind the storefronts which would apparently lead to our new home.

As we climbed the stairway we were in for a pleasant surprise. The stairway was a nice (faux) granite and was lined with a lot of potted plants. When we hit the third floor of the walk-up we saw a balcony-type place lined with a lot of plants. The site of plant life was a welcome change from the cold industrial atmosphere of everything in Gumi. When we walked into our apartment we were pleasantly surprised again. Our apartment is huge. As we walked in there was a little porch area. Following this there was a door to the left leading into the master bedroom, which was quite large with a queen sized bed. There was another door which lead to a single bedroom. After that the apartment opened up into the kitchen, which was the center of the apartment. A little crowded, with the washing machine in it, but still larger than Gumi. Then there was another hallway with a door on the left which lead to another single bedroom. The hallway lead to our living room, which - although strangely tucked away at the end of the apartment, was also fairly large, with some lovely orange vinyl furniture. So our apartment was huge. 3 bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen for the two of us. The refrigerator was very big, which is great for food-focused people like us. Here's the best part though - we have an oven! There are hardly any ovens in Korea, with most of them being dinky things. Ours is a full-sized western-style oven. Sweet ass!

So after checking out the apartment we helped the Director and the moving man lug all our stuff in. We said good-bye to the Director (who barely speaks English) and started the settling in process. Our apartment is very 70s-ish. It's big, but not new, but we'll make it a home.

Have to run, but I'll write more later.