Our new home

One of the top requests we've gotten is for pictures of our place. Request granted!

So this is our villa where we live. The difference between an apartment and a villa is that an apartment can have multiple tenants per floor (think apartment 2A, 2B, 2C) whereas a villa only has one tenant per floor (101, 201, 301). Our complex is made up of 6 buildings and is surrounded by lots of rice paddy fields. 

Here's a rice paddy field across the street from us.

There a lot sprawling around us which is nice; it gives our complex a feel of being outside of town even though it's a short walk to the main street.

Asia and I have enjoyed taking walks around the fields, though I'm not sure how socially acceptable it is. I am confident that this path is for pedestrians to use to get to a regular street.

It will be interesting watching the rice paddy development over the year. From what I understand the fields are worked on February/March, seeds are put into flooded fields in May and harvested in October. I'm sure the landscape will look much nicer being a lush green.

One of the neat things about dwellings here is the lack of physical keys. To get into the building we enter a code on this keypad. 

If you hit a wrong key when entering it says something to you in Korean. We haven't been able to figure out how to call up to our place but we also wouldn't know which buttons to push on our intercom. The stairwell has motion-sensored lights on each floor which is handy at night.

We're up on the third floor. It wasn't our first choice but we've adjusted. I can't say I'm a fan of bringing groceries in when Mike's not around though!

Here's our door; it also has an electronic keypad to get in. There's a pleasant lady voice that greets you when you come and go. You may be wondering what's to the left of the door. That's a little camera so we can see who is at the door from inside. We have a panel in our living room with a screen and some other type of control in one of our bathrooms...not sure what that's for though.

 

Are you ready for the full tour? You're welcome in, but take your shoes off.  Seriously. It's proper etiquette here to remove your shoes when entering a household and even some restaurants.

Entryway, unheated

It has two wardrobe closets in it, but no good place to hang a coat.

Sliding door to the rest of the place

Pictured left is the straight view into the place. Pictured right is the little hallway to the right with the somewhat oddly placed vanity. The closed door goes to one of the currently empty bedrooms. On the right (door not shown) is a bathroom.

There is a very small lip in the floor between the door to the shower. It's not unusual for a bathroom to have no door to the shower but have a bigger change in floor height to keep the water from flooding the entire room. The sink and toilet do seem lower than a standard American bathroom though. 

Most places have these wardrobe closets. They are as tall as the room and sometimes take up an entire wall giving it the feeling of being a closet. 

Kitchen and dining room area. There's also a door to the laundry room. Our kitchen is not the norm from what we've seen. Most kitchens have very little counter space. It was definitely a draw for me! Intrigued by the chandelier above the table? Me too...

Here's our tiny gas stove. It's been an adventure learning how to cook on gas, but I think I'll end up liking it a lot. It will also be interesting learning to bake in such a tiny space once we have pans. Plus I get to guess what the temperature is when using the stove. Fun! Koreans do not use ovens nearly as much here and one place we saw when looking did not have an oven at all. We do have a dishwasher opposite the oven but it's just as tiny.

Water coolers are everywhere around here and we get jugs delivered to us monthly. I love that we don't have to carry these up three flights of stairs ourselves.

Living room & balcony

Master bedroom

Closet/bathroom area off of bedroom

Vanity opposite closets

 

Tub in master bath. Much smaller than American tubs. Go figure. :)

Pictured right is the only actual closet in one of the bedrooms. Of course it still includes a wardrobe within.

And that's a wrap! We saw quite a few places with realtors and maybe sometime I'll put up pictures of the interesting villas we viewed. I had no idea what our living quarters would look like living in Korea but we ended up in a fairly Americanized place. The things that stick out as more Korean are:

• Wallpaper--Though our place has wallpaper everywhere we were lucky and only have one little wall featuring floral and colored wallpaper. 
• Under floor heating, called ondol--This is an awesome feature and makes walking around so cozy warm.
• Primarily 220 volt plugs. We do have some 110 volt outlets so haven't had to buy any converters yet.
• Light switches are often located outside of the room rather than in it.

Overall, our complex is quite Americanized. Most people who live here work in the same area as Mike does. However, nearby complexes have more of a mixture of Koreans and Americans. 

We enjoy our place but look forward to getting our shipping crate in the next few weeks!