My humble abode

So I promised my mom that I would write about my apartment. This one's for you, Mom!
(If you're generally bored by domestic details, skip to the last paragraph...)

My apartment is lovely and convenient and also holds a few surprises for a westerner. It is basically a studio, with a foyer, kitchen and bathroom that each have separate doors. In this sense, it is a step up from my Portland studio, which had foyer, kitchen and bathroom but no doors. With me so far?

The doors to the kitchen and foyer are sliding and composed of many panes of translucent glass. The frames are a lovely medium brown wood, like cedar. In the main room, all in the same warm medium brown color, there are a nice firm bed with drawers underneath, a table with two chairs, a desk/bookshelf unit, and a dresser/cabinet in which I have shut away the TV I don't plan to use. There are also a comfortable computer desk chair and a coat / hat rack. There is also (for you techie people) a nifty-difty phone on the wall connected to my doorbell, with a video screen, so that whoever is at the door calls me up and I see them and talk to them before I open. Unfortunately I haven't gotten to use this much. Clearly I need to make some friends.

All of the cabinets are pretty, though fake, inlaid wood. The floor is pretty, though fake, "wood" patterned vinyl. There are all kinds of cabinets in the foyer for shoes, hanging clothes, etc. The shoe closet is of course right at the entrance, because you have to take off your shoes on the marble flooring just inside before stepping up a few inches to the "clean" apartment floor.

The kitchen has a nice big sink, a perfect little fridge for one person, two gas burners (yes!) which took me days to learn how to turn on (there is a safety valve on the gas line on the wall), a TINY oven for broiling fish (so much for all my favorite baking recipes...sigh) and...beat this...a washing machine!! Yes, we are really moving up in the world. Do laundry in the comfort of your own home! The kitchen is, though long and skinny, the most pleasant part of the apartment because it has large windows. I want to get a little table so I can have my breakfast in there.

And this leaves the bathroom. This bathroom explains the reason for the little plastic slippers that people wear in the bathroom in Korea and Japan, but which had never made much sense to me before. The bathroom is a step down from the rest of the apartment, and it is tiled. In the middle of the floor is a drain, like a public toilet. There are a mirror, a sink, a toilet, a cabinet, and a towel rack. Finally, there is a hose on the wall above the sink. That is my shower. No curtain or shower walls, get it?
It took me two days to get over the idea of getting my entire bathroom wet when I shower, but in the end I had little choice.

So that's my apartment! Now that I've added a few posters and keepsakes and a new quilt with butterflies and flowers, it feels like home.