Welcome to our new and first apartment! This was before all of our stuff arrived, but I wanted to show you the open floor plan. We love it! In this post, I'm going to point out some features of our apartment that are common in Korea. Part 2 will be a video tour once I decorate a bit more!
The first thing is that in Seoul, everyone lives in apartments, so they got really good at building apartments that whole families will live in their whole lives. Our building has 21 floors, so it has a fabulous elevator. It also has a keypad instead of a keyhole, so that multiple people can have access without a key. I love being able to leave my house without worrying about remembering my key.
Our apartment feels very secure. There is a guard gate at the entrance to our parking lot and a locked door downstairs. If a guest comes to the apartment building, they can enter our apartment number and this phone will ring! It'll show a video of our guest and we can open the door for them to come up. It's in Korean, so our realtor put a "open door" sticker!
Inside the door are these awesome shoe cabinets. The rest of the apartment is a step up. The idea is to leave all your shoes in the entrance so that the apartment floors stay clean! This is especially important because Koreans spend time on the floor eating, playing games, watching television, and having after-dinner coffee. If you look at the first panorama in this post, you can see a long coffee table in front of the tv. I hope to do some entertaining around this table in true Korean style soon!
Next, there is heating control in every room. The problem is that it is in Celsius, so my American brain needs help figuring it out. In summer, you set it to very low so the heat is off. When it is hot, we rely on these AC units that you can see in the corner of this pic from moving day. There are only one large and two small units in the whole apartment, and Koreans try to conserve the use of AC because it uses expensive energy.
Speaking of temperature control, Korean apartments have these "verandas" on both sides to buffer the temperature with the outside. Like right now in early fall we probably could use the AC, but the windows let in a nice breeze. In the winter, the verandas will get cold before the apartment will. These are also an excellent place to hang your laundry to dry! This is also necessary because of the expensive energy thing.
The veranda next to our kitchen is our laundry room and pantry! Korean apartments have cabinets, cabinets, and more cabinets! Families who live here don't have garages or basements, so they need fantastic storage in their homes!
Finally, since we are leasing, our landlord provides use with some services. Included in our rent is internet, cable, and this water service. It is a blessing that we can drink clean water that is either refreshingly cold or hot and ready to make tea!
Seong and I are working on making this place our home. Even though we will only be here for 9 more months, I think that there is something special about our first home as a married couple!
P.S. 아파트 is an English loan word that is pronounced "Ah-pah-teu" from the beginning of the word "apartment".
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