Home Sweet Korean Home

So, we've been in Korea for two months now.  We have loved everything about Korea so far, except our living situation.  We've been staying in the base hotel called the Dragon Hill Lodge.  It's a very nice hotel, but not for two months.  We've been crammed into two small rooms with twelve pieces of luggage.  Needless to say, we were ready to get out of there.  Unfortunately for us, we had to wait until a house came available on the military base.  So we waited.  And we waited.  And we waited some more.  Finally, the military decided there weren't any available houses so they said we could find something suitable in the city.  Yeah!  

We started calling realtors and looked at what felt like a million apartments.  We looked at high rises, villas (apartments buildings that are only up to about 5 stories high), places near the base, places far from the base.  We could not find anything we liked.  Finally, when I was beyond frustrated, we found our home.  It's perfect for our family.  It's a four bedroom villa right at the base of Seoul Tower.  Seoul Tower has been one of the highlights of living here for our family.  Every night before going to bed the kids run down the hall in the hotel to see what color the tower is that night.  So finding this apartment that sits right in the shadow of the tower was a fun find for us.  Not to mention the fact that the tower is on a mountain (Namsan Mountain) covered with running trails.  Score!  Living in the second largest city in the world, it's hard to find a square inch of grass.  We have an entire mountain within walking distance from our house.  

Here are a few pictures.  This is the view toward the mountain from our balcony. 

 This is the living room.

 This is the hallway connecting the living room to the rest of the house.

 Here is the kitchen and dining room.

 This is the master bedroom that also has a balcony.

 Here's the master bathroom.

 There will be a few things that take a while to get used to...mainly the Korean oven.  It's comically small.  Here's one of my smaller cookie sheets that won't even fit inside.  

We had to bake Christmas cookies the other day on a pizza pan!  Not to mention the fact that it's in Celsius.  Thank heavens for google so I could figure out how what 375 degrees Fahrenheit converts to in Celsius.  

But, that's all part of living in a different country.  It's so fun to have these experiences. 

I think my absolute favorite part of our house, though, is the rooftop.  It's awesome!  I can't wait until it warms up a bit so we can have picnics and parties up there.  I think we could even camp on it!  For now though, it was the perfect place to play in the snow.  

Ahhh, it's nice to be home.