i arrived back in korea almost a month ago, on thursday, february 23rd. once i went through customs and retreived my luggage, i caught a bus from the airport into seoul. ally, the korean english teacher whom i was dealing with at my new school met me at a bus stop in the area of the school. she also brought along her four-year-old daughter and the mother of on of the students from the school who owned a hotel nearby. we walked there and i was all set up in a room they graciously offered me free of charge until i found an apartment. after traveling for around twenty hours, i was ready to hit the sack and did so almost immediately.

the next morning i walked around the area a bit and got some pictures of the hotel.

later that day ally met me and we went looking for an apartment in the area. the other foreign english teacher was moving into a building nearby so we checked that out first. we looked at a room that i wasn't all that excited about so we decided to look around more. the more we checked around, however, the more we realized that the other places were much more expensive. in korea you have to put down a lot of money as a deposit, and most of the places in this area were asking for the equivalent of around $10,000. with the help of my parents i was able to put down $5000, but double that was just plain impossible. it takes a lot to get started but you get the deposit back at the end, and the rents are cheaper, that building offered places for just $380 per month. i decided to think about it more, and ally took me over to the school to check it out and meet some people.

after that we looked around and saw one place near the school, but it wasn't furnished (the first place we saw was) and you had to walk way up a hill to get to it. finally i started to realize that the first one we saw was the best i was going to get, and although i wasn't all that excited about it, there were a lot of benefits to it. first of all it's in a really good area, and it's about a three minute walk from the subway. the bus that i take to school stops right in front of it, too. i figured it would be good to get it solved quickly and that i'd make the most of whatever place i ended up in anyway.

so ally and i went back to the rental office and i put a $300 hold on the place. we made a plan to meet on monday to settle everything, meet the owner, and pay the deposit. so i had the weekend in the hotel to relax and get readjusted to the time period. i went back to my hotel around 4:00p and ended up sleeping until 3:00a.