myretroperspective

Welcome to the third installment of the Expat Diaries! Go ahead and link up you expat/travel stories below and make sure to stop by some other bloggers and say hi! I so look forward to reading everyone's stories each month! Thanks so much for being a part of this! So let's get started shall we? We live in a small apartment here in Korea. Well, let me rephrase that to say that in American standards, we live in a small apartment. We feel very blessed and fortunate to have the size apartment that we do because we have known couples whose work has provided them with a 300 square foot studio apartment for the both of them. How they're both still alive is beyond me. But needless to say, all three of our apartments in Korea have been smaller than what we're accustomed to back home in the States. And while some things on this list may not apply to our current spot, they all could have been said about at least one of them. So if you're sitting there wondering what qualifies ...

There are both many rewards (travel, experiencing another culture) and difficulties with living abroad. Many of these difficulties such as language barriers, strange food, and cultural differences, I was fully aware of and mentally prepared for. But then there were those that I didn't expect. Like decorating. I know there are those of you that don't care what your place looks like as long as there's a bed to crash in. But I'm far from that. Even though our stay in Korea is limited, I want our place to  feel like a home, like a permanent residence even though it's far from that. In our apartment back in the states, we had decorations galore, but unfortunately when we were only allowed to bring two 50 pound bags with us, there were more important things to bring with us besides decor. When we first arrived in our school provided (thankfully furnished) apartment our first year, the only decor we were provided was a bright neon pink comforter, hub's favorite (and ye...

Our new humble abode. This is what most of the new apartment buildings look like where we live. I'm very happy to announce that we are unpacked, uncluttered and completely settled into our new place. While it was a long day last Saturday as we spent the good part of 13 hours packing up, making trips back and forth and unpacking everything, we now feel right at home in our new place. Packing: our worst nightmare but our cats dream come true While with our last place, we drove around solo and found new buildings, it wasn't possible to do that with our new location. We moved out of a relatively new, spread out area where buildings are being completed monthly and into an older town nearby which is densely populated with people and apartment buildings. We needed serious help navigating this maze of buildings. We recruited a great Korean friend of ours to help us out. Little did we know that it would once again, take a lot of foot work to find the perfect place for us. See, in Korea,...

Well we did it! We found a new apartment closer to work and surprisingly it's  not  the size of a shoebox!  Through finding a new apartment, I realized that I had never shown any pictures of our old place on this little blog of mine. Finding an apartment as a foreigner can be a little tricky. Most of the time, apartments are provided by the school for the foreign teacher. But since we knew we wanted to stay in Korea for a few more years and weren't sure if we would be staying with the same school, we wanted to find a place of our own so if we did by chance change workplaces, we wouldn't have to change apartments. To find the place that we are currently in, we narrowed down the area that we wanted to be in and drove around for days, looking for new buildings or buildings that would be soon be done. We then gave the telephone number of that apartment to a rockstar Korean friend of ours who would then call the building and get all of the details for us. Not too difficult, ...

i can't believe that it has already been a year since we arrived in korea. the time seems to go so much faster here compared to back home. the other day jeremy and i were talking about how different life is now compared to when we first arrived. some things that we had to face when we first arrived: -eating ramen everyday because we couldn't read any of the menus. we still can't read half of it but now we can recognize what we like -jetlag! getting up at 6am every morning. we figured we could walk around and see the city only to find out that koreans are not morning people. the streets are deserted till at least 9, if not later. -staying in a love motel for the first two weeks. exactly what it sounds like. rooms can be rented by the hour or the night and mood lighting is always provided ; ) -sticking to the same two restaurants because they had pictures on their menus -taking hours at the grocery store staring at labels i couldn't read and trying to find any food slight...

this december has been surprisingly cold outside. when we first came to korea it was cold but we were told not to turn on the floor heat in the apartment because the cost of it was so high. (apartments here have heated floors instead of central heat) so we plugged in an electrical heater and thought nothing more of it. turns out, it was just as expensive if not more so. our bill was the highest in our building (something i'm slightly proud of) and a government official was sent to our house to find out why we were wasting so much electricity. i guess we know better for next year. we were debating whether or not to get a tree but the holiday season just doesn't seem the same without one. we went to homeplus (the local supermarket) to look for one. we saw a lot of decorations and decided to come back the next week to pick some out. by the time we got back to the store, around the 10th of december, everything was sold out. they had a sad looking fake tree and some bulb ornaments l...

i  know you guys have been just dying with anticipation to see what sort of living conditions we have over here. well the wait is over my friends. we actually got a really nice place, seeing as how most couples we have talked to have to share a studio apartment. yes, we're newly weds and crazy in love, and that's why we're glad we get to keep it that way in a spacious two bedroom apartment.  our lovely living room with dumpster furniture. trust me, it's not as bad as it sounds. we know that each piece of furniture usually only has one previous owner. they are not big on thrifting or used things here because they think that part of the previous owner's spirit stays in the piece that they owned. in every apartment building there are areas where you can leave unwanted furniture and such. lucky for us, it's right next to where we park our bike everyday. i get my shopping fix in every single day. and that large rectangle looking thing in the corner? that's our ai...

Well after months of planning, endless trips to the post office, a 14 hour flight across the pacific ocean and one lost bag, we have finally made it to South Korea! For those of you who don’t know, we are located on Geoje Island, off the southern tip of South Korea. The island is roughly 250 sq miles and has a population of around 220,000, our city being the largest on the island. It’s clearly smaller than Tulsa but with everything being so compact and the constant hussle and bussle on the streets, it definitely feels like we’re in a big city. This is a picture taken from our hotel room which we stayed in for the first two weeks here. Everywhere you look in the city you can see mountains stretching along the horizon. We are now in our roomy apartment and will give a proper house tour soon! We hope you’ll check back and follow us on our new adventure together!