Moving back to Ilsan is like moving home, a little bit.
The new apartment isn’t perfect. I knew it would be very small – it’s marginally bigger than my last Ilsan apartment and it’s about the same size as my Yeonggwang apartment, but it’s older and a bit more run-down on the edges than either of those. Smallness, per se, doesn’t bother me at all. I wholly desire and approve a compact lifestyle, for the most part – the only reason I can think of to want a bigger apartment would be in the event that people came to visit me that wanted to stay with me – but in my almost 4 years in Korea, only one person has ever done that.
It’s also nice to have “full kitchen” which this place, like the Yeonggwang apartment, doesn’t have. But I can cope. I will buy some inexpensive furnishings that can help make up for that. Once I get the rest of my stuff here, it will feel like home. As it is, it’s pretty “bare” – I told Curt I would buy my own furniture, so I have to do that. Not going to buy a bed – I’ve gone native on that, and have no issues sleeping on the floor. It’d be nice to have a sofa of some kind, but that’s not super high priority. A small table or desk, and some shelves, I definitely need. I already bought a hanger-thing for my clothes – there’s no closet, which I may miss a bit – the thing I liked best about my previous Ilsan apartment was the relatively generous closet and storage space.
Okay. Enough of all that. No complaints – it’s entirely within the parameters that I was expecting. And of course, it’s in Ilsan. That boils down to the old dictum: location, location, location. Going across the street to the “Orange Mart” is like an entire day-long trip to Gwangju, as far as shopping opportunities. I bought some french whole-grain mustard, spinach and tricolor pasta, and cheddar cheese this morning. Plus the infinite variety of more typical Korean things that are buyable.
The building is about a kilometer northwest along Jungangno from my previous Ilsan apartment – which places me about 2 blocks from the Juyeop subway station and about 1.5 kilometers from my place of work.
Here are some pictures. The first one, I’m looking up at my building from the outside, from in front of the Orange Mart – I’m standing on the southeast corner of the intersection of Jungangno and Gangseonno (and isn’t it amazing, I know the names of all these streets now, which I once-upon-a-time didn’t, for several years, even).
I drew a giant green and gold arrow pointing at its location on the 7th floor – that’s my window that you can see open, there.
Here is from that little window, looking almost straight down and a little toward the street (note the “rooftop garden” on the next building across).
Here is a view from a less precipitous angle, looking toward the Orange Mart and the intersection (roughly east-north-east).
Here is view from the corner by the window, looking toward my kitchen and the entryway – bathroom door is open on the left middle.
Here is a self-portrait of me sitting on my bedding in the corner by the window, pirating an unreliable wifi connection. I’ll get internet of my own soon, I hope – meanwhile, this is uploaded from a wifi in a nearby cafe.
