i moved into my new place on monday, february 27th. it's in 신촌 (sinchon), a somewhat trendy neighborhood where a lot of college-aged kids seem to hang out. there's lot of restaurants and bars around, and i'm about a three minute walk to the subway station. there's also a few major department stores nearby, so it was convenient when i was getting all the necessary accessories for my place. i'm on the 13th floor out of 18 in my building, but unfortunately the view looks out right into another high-rise. luckily that one is a movie theater so there aren't any windows looking back at me, still it's not a good view at all.

the story behind those pink blankets goes like this: my first day in here i went over to the department store nearby to get a mattress cover, blanket, and pillow. i picked out a blue one in a style that i like, but i wasn't sure about the size. she unravelled it and showed it to me, and i thought it looked a little small. i did happen to have a picture of the bed on my camera, and from that she seemed to think it was the right size. so she assured me that if it wasn't i could exchange it and it would be no problem. she seemed very nice, i trusted her. so sure enough when i got home, it didn't fit. there was no way i could get the mattress cover to fit, so i ended up sleeping on the bare mattress with just the blanket over me, which turned out to not be so warm after all. as a result i ended up being cold all night and the next day i was actually feeling sick. so that night i lugged the cumbersome blanket and matress pad back to the store for my friendly exchange as promised, but all of a sudden things had changed. she told me they didn't have a larger version of that style, that was the biggest one. okay, fine, i'll choose another style, i said. i didn't really care about the style. but all the larger sizes she was showing me were both ugly and really expensive. i was not a happy customer. i really wanted to just ask for my money back and be done with it, but i needed something warm to sleep with that night. so, i settled on the cheapest, warmest ones i could get which turned out to be this pink one you now see before you. and i had to pay another 50,000ì›? ($50) on top of the 80,000ì›? ($80) i already paid for the original set. nothing like paying more for what you don't want. the only saving grace for the pink blanket is i will say it is actually very warm.

too bad i don't have a tv or anything to look at while sitting on it. right now if you sit on it you get to look at the clothes rack. i think i'll get a tv later, especially as the world cup approaches.

by korean-style i mean that there is a drain on the floor of the bathroom, so you just take a shower right there in front of your sink. it's kind of a weird at first, but i actually came to enjoy it a lot last year. the only problem is the floor is wet afterwards so if you have to go back in to brush your teeth or something, you have to wear slippers and watch out that the bottoms of your pant legs don't get wet. it's great when you want to clean the bathroom, though. you just wash everywhere and then spray the shower all over everything to rinse.

well, that's pretty much all of it, i also have a refrigerator that didn't make it into the pictures. i think it might actually be a bit bigger than the place i stayed in last year. it doesn't have heated floors, and actually i can't control the heat, it's central and comes from the building. during the first couple of weeks it actually got pretty cold at times, so next winter i think i'll invest in a portable space heater, that should help. all in all it looks a lot better than when i first saw it, and after almost a month of being here it's already starting to feel like home.