Grand tour: Korean apartment edition

We moved in!  Pictures of the new home, everyone's favorite part.

This is our front door as seen from the inside of our apartment.  It's kind of tricky and narrow to get the view from the outside.  The door with the wooden frame is a sliding door.  Just past it is a foyer with a closet for shoes to the left (so much room for shoes, but no room for jackets...).  The door you see with the silver handle is the actual locking door to the apartment.  They have electronic door locks here, so we use a pass code instead of a key to get in.  The door opens to a hallway.  It's a three floor walk up, with us on top.  Parking is underneath the building (it's kind of on brick stilts), so it's six flights of stairs to get to our place.  I won't need to do a legs workout again for a long time!

When you walk through the front door, this bathroom is immediately to your left.  I think the toilet seat may be heated, but I haven't attempted translating the Hangul yet.

The bathtub is big and comfy. Everything is covered in tile with a drain in the floor.  There is also a faucet about knee high on the wall across from the sink...not sure what that's meant for.

Straight ahead when you come is our living room.  The floors are wood laminate throughout except for the tile bathrooms.  The walls are white -get this- sparkly.  I'm not even kidding.  You don't notice it right away...it's not blinding or anything.  It's just kind of "not quite right" and hysterical that the walls and even some of the fixtures and cabinets have a definite glitter quality to them.  

The first left is the bathroom and the second left is the master bedroom.  The bed is platform style "Korean Queen" which is basically the same as an American queen.  There are three closet sections: one for Husband, one for me, and the third for randomness.

The master bathroom is connected to the master bedroom.  Watch your step entering.  It's about a 6 inch step in and out of the bathrooms.  I think this is because of the traditional Korean style shower, which only this bathroom has.  Look closely and you'll see the shower head in the upper left corner of the picture.  It hangs over the sink and when you use it -not that I've tried yet- the whole bathroom is your shower.  Good luck!

Exiting the master bedroom, you come back through the living room.  The tall white box in the corner is not a refrigerator.  It's an air conditioner!  All the furniture came with the apartment.  I'm so glad we brought our rug.

 Charlie's glad we brought our rug, too!  It took him a few days to get used to the hard floors.  For a while there he was just hopping between rugs.  He didn't want to jump on or off any furniture because he was afraid of slipping.  Husband bought Charlie this squeaky duck, which totally makes up for the lost toys in Michigan.  It is his favorite now!!  It reminds me of the old Nintendo game Duck Hunt.

Passing the living room on your left, next comes a wide open space that we don't know what it's for would be great for parties.  There's a water cooler to the right of the frig.  The frig by the way has a little trap door for easy access to milk and other things you want within arm's reach.  

 Just before you reach the dining table is a door to the left, which is the office.  It came with a desk, chair, and bookshelf.

Keep walking through the kitchen and dining area and there is a third bedroom to the left.  We have the TRX hung there and a bunch of boxes inside the room.  Straight ahead with the sliding doors is the laundry room.  It has a drying rack suspended from the ceiling with a pulley to bring it down when you're ready to hang things on it.

The washer/dryer is an all in one unit.  While it takes a few hours to do a load, it works well.  I'm still not sure what most of the settings are (will be working on that because I just about shrunk most of my jeans), but we have a translated cheat sheet for some of the options.

Exiting the laundry room, the kitchen is on your left again.  It's sweet and simple, but just what we need.  I really like the modern design.  The dish drainer above the sink is so handy!

The first dinner in a new home is always Sloppy Joe's for us.  It's easy, good, and simple.

The gas range was pretty easy to operate, but the oven was a different story.  I converted the Celsius to Fahrenheit, but my broccoli was still frozen after twenty minutes.  Apparently there is no pilot light, so you have to push in the knob first to get the gas burning.  Good thing I didn't fume out the place.  We kept the fan on the rest of the night just to be sure.

This is the view from the kitchen and dining room out towards the rest of the house.  The foyer area is on the left, followed by the doors to the bathroom and master bedroom.

We have great built-ins in the dining room.  The light fixture is strange because it, too, is sparkly, and it also has stars, moons, and hearts on it!  I would have adored it in fifth grade.

This may be the best part of the whole place: our new Keurig coffee maker.  It is fun, easy, and delicious.  Come over and I'll make you a cup:)

It's starting to feel like home around here now.  Thanks for coming by for a visit!