New Furniture

Well, I finally got some new furniture for my apartment and I couldn't be happier. A Korean friend and I went shopping in Jwacheon-dong the area of Busan that sells furniture and we found a "discount" furniture shop. We went in and with my friend translating and I was able to order some furniture and arrange to have it delivered.

This was on a Saturday and the delivery was arranged for the following Tuesday morning [since I don't work mornings] and would be home to accept delivery. I paid half the money down and got a receipt and paid the remainder when the furniture was delivered.

What many people don't realize about Korea is that there are not really street names and building numbers. So having anything delivered or giving someone your address involves drawing a map and using a lot of landmarks. Luckily, I am near MegaMart a huge department store in Dongnae, Busan so if I use that and the Dongnae Subway station and my school [school X] as landmarks most everyone can find my building. I can even draw and label a map to my apartment in Korean.

This is my new chair. I bought two of these and a glass-topped kitchen table and luckily the price included delivery, too. I've sunk so much into this apartment already that every penny [or should I say won] hurts.



I bought a frame for my bed. As, I mentioned before I just can't get used to sleeping on the floor. I don't like it. I had the matress already as it came with the apartment. The bed frame is only lamanated plywood and it cost around 150,000 won [about $ 180.00 Canadian]. But for me it was well worth the cost. The pollution is so bad here that over night a dust settles on everything including the floor and with my head so close to the floor I wake up coughing and with a sore throat. [I can tell the purchase of a vacuum cleaner and some bags are in my near future].

One thing I had forgotten to do was measure the matress and so I had to get my friend to help me buy a tape measure and then later measure the matress and then call the company and tell them the exact size of the matress so that they knew which size bed frame to deliver. It turns out I have the smallest matress made. It is a single and not even a twin or super single.

I bought a new "mink" blanket for my bed. A mink blanket is a warm, soft, fuzzy blanket that is popular for tourists to buy when they visit Korea. I found this one on Texas Street. Texas Street is a foreigner street located across from Busan Train Station. It mainly Russian and has a lot of bars and nightclubs but it does have some souvenir shops and some shops that sell some of the "black market" foreign foods Westerners crave like canned corned beef and Cheese Whiz.

This is a picture showing my new table with the microwave [ithe microwave was actually provided by my school] and my toaster oven which my friend, Ray, had stored for me while I was in Canada. I recently went to Ulsan and got the things he had so graciously stored for me the entire 10 months I was home in Canada.

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Well, that's my new home in Korea. It is so much more comfortable now. I spent a forture getting it fixed up especially since I have only received one pay check since arriving in Korea. [In Korea you get paid monthly and on the 10th of each month]. But, it is at the beginning when I need the comfort the most. It is then that I feel the most homesick and am the most apt to experience culture shock. Also, by buying all these things now I can get the most use out of them before having to think about selling, moving or storing them. Or at least that is the way I am choosing to look at it.