One Weekish

Well, I'm finally moved into my permanent apartment here in Cheonan and it's pretty darn cozy. The guy I replaced, Dan, was kind enough to leave me a ton of stuff: food, cleaning supplies, toiletries, tons of dishes, pots and pans, a microwave, a toaster, some books, puzzles, office supplies. There's lots of other amenities in the apartment that my old one didn't have, like a desk and chair, a couch, a side table, a little kitchen table, a drying rack to dry my clothes, etc. He even gave me a card that's sort of like a DC area smart trip card that I can use to pay for buses, trains, subways, taxis, even groceries and stuff at various stores. He also gave me a prepaid cell phone so that I'll actually have a phone number here for local communication. Really cool of him to leave me all of this stuff. He was a cool dude in general, definitely the easiest of my foreign co-teachers to get along with, so it's kind of a bummer to see him go. I shot a video of the new apartment so you can see what it's like. Excuse the terrible cinematography:

Here's a view from the gazebo at the park down the street. For some reason all of the park areas around here have all kinds of weatherproof exercise equipment, including these ones for kids. This park, like any vaguely nature-y area here, is totally swarming with big orange dragonflies. It's sorta funny how the locals treat these like annoying pests but dragonflies, being sorta uncommon in the US, have sort of a mystical or at least exotic air to them so I thought it was pretty cool.

The front of the park. There's a running track looping through the whole park.

7-11's are everywhere here, and strangely all of them have outdoor seating. I guess they think 7-11 is classier than it really is.

The ubiquitous apartment blocks. I would guess at least half of the people who live here live in buildings like these, which totally dominate the skyline of the city. The rest of us live in apartments in the smaller 3-4 story buildings that have things like restaurants, shops, and cafes on the ground floors.