Our new place

We moved into our lovely 11th floor apartment in LG Metro City today. Our place has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a good sized kitchen and a big living room. and four interior porches/utility rooms. A whole bunch of furniture was delivered from my work, so the place is already a bit full even without our own things. We also got the Internet hooked up today, but we don't have an adapter for our computer yet, so no pictures for a few more days.

LG Metro City is a relatively new neighborhood stuck between the big fancy Gwangalli Bridge and Igidae Park. There are about 30 buildings and each has 25 stories. Our view and sun-exposure are nothing great, but we should be happy.

Korean homes do not use central heat or fireplaces. They use ondol and ondol are great. They have pipes under all the floors and pump hot water throughout. The house heats from the floor up. There are also valves under the kitchen sink so we can turn the ondol on and off separately for each room. Pretty neat.

Koreans eat kimchi with every meal. Kimchi is a spicy fermented cabbage dish. They like it so much that apartments come with a dedicated kimchi refrigerator. Since our regular fridge is not hooked up yet, we are storing our orange juice in the kimchi fridge. I hope the OJ does not smell as bad as the fridge tomorrow.

The stove that came with the apartment does not have an oven, so we got a second range/oven unit. The gas company will come to hook that up soon. We can cook on 8 burners at once, if we were so inclined.

There is a super market about 100 yards away and a Mega Mart about one mile away. We are also close to a Baskin Robbins, a Dunkin Donuts, an Outback Steakhouse, and a McDonald's. Luckily for us, there are also hundreds of little Korean shops and restaurants in the area.

A very nice old man works in the guard shack in front of our building. He can communicate well enough in English and can watch us on the remote camera when we are in the elevator.

All in all, I think we will be happy here for a year.