This was written in August describing my first weekend alone... It is now months later... I'm very happy in Daegu, in the same apartment (might even keep it when I renew my contract - that's how nice I made it), having so many good experiences in Korea...
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so having some issues with my apartment and had the landlord stop by sunday morning
- bathroom cabinet hanging off the wall
- toilet seat comes off in your hand
- laundry room light switch dead
- stench from drain in laundry room and bathroom so i am bleaching twice daily
- a/c doesnt really work
- one plug outlet dead so u can not watch tv while the a/c is on
- hallway light is dead so i can not see when i try to put the key in at night

i do not get the sense he was too impressed. he just took down the cabinet and took off the toilet seat and never came back. i dont know how these apartments are chosen? does the school get an allowance and pocket the difference? i am on the ground floor by the entrance so i can hear if people are coming and going and going up the stairs. nobody lives here.. i am the caretaker. even the locals dont want to live here. there is no air circulation and because i am the ground floor the water just sits in the drains. when i am home i have the fan on but turn it off when i go out. so when i come out the whole apartment stinks until i turn the fan back on. people are saying to ask for a new apartment but i dont know what the whole politics of that is. next year i will ask to chose the apartment for my replacement. also, a lot of renewing teachers just take the $400 housing allowance and rent their own place, but they have to pay $1000-$10,000 key money.

i dont know why everyone is saying korea is so cheap. a few things are really cheap, everythig else is expensive. there are no imports so we do not have the choices or cheaper alternatives we have back home. i have yet to see a digital alarm clock, they do not exist. nor do bus maps in english or korean! so friday nite is spent $30 at tesco on practically nothing. cornflakes $6, kraft singles 20 pack $6. 5 apples $4, so barely nohting and already spent $30. i used to buy a weeks groceries back home for that. some of these mom/pop stores are actually cheaper for fruit. i bought 8 pack peaches for $4. otherwise any fruit i have seen is just too expensive. internet rooms are cheap $1/hour.

saturday morning cleaned my apartment a bit so i can start unpacking my clothes and setting the kitchen. thank goodness i brought bacterial wipes and mr clean magic eraser which started to shred after a while. then decided to go for a walk and try to find a muslim restaurant. so chilgok is a T shaped suburb across the river from daegu. i tried to walk down the long north south road to get to the bus station on teh other side of the river where there is one restaurant ali baba. i walked for a good hour but only got halfway to the river. but i did see lots of brand names stores and some mall type stores so lots of selection there.

ended up taking a bus to get to the other side of the river coz i was tired from walking, cleaning my apartment, and have not been sleeping proper because of heat/noise from fan. actually, in korean culture they believe if you sleep with the fan on you can die (fan death). my co-teacher actually was very concerned to hear i have been sleeping with the fan on and very seriously warned me that i could die????

walking on sidewalks is actually more dangerous. cars park on the sidewalk, if they see a spot they will dive in with no regard for pedestrians. same for when they want to dive out back onto the street. i was nearly hit twice in teh space of 20 minutes. so i try to take a bus down to bukbu station. bus routes at the bus stop are all in korean but i guessed which one to try to get me to bukbu bus station. when i get there it was very easy to find all the indian places. there are a few grocery stores by the bus station selling all the cooking masalas from pakistan. one guy even showed me jalebi and barfi in some packets.

there is one restaurant ali baba. they are basically closed for ramadan and just serving the mosque across the road so they told me to leave and goto the mosque. so i did get a free meal at the mosque (naan and curry) but it was served in a big tray with no plates and everyone was just eating out the tray. also, when you have 30 pakistanis in the mosque that all know each other you suddenly stand out and they all want to know who you are, where are u from, why are u here. one guys is actually an english teacher here from pakistan but not sure how he qualified as he is not from one of the 7 native english countries eligible for visa (usa/can/uk/ire/aus/nz/sa)
trying to get the bus back also had no idea as the bus runs in both directions so asked some girls to help me which was funny with their english as they started running all across the platforms and telling me to wait and stay put

there are 165 epik teachers placed in daegu but we have no idea where anyone is. we are all messaging on facebook. i ran into two people at tesco on friday nite. there are others in chilgok but i have yet to find them other than facebook. there is another indian restaurant in chilgok but was pretty ****. it was in the basement, looked really dirty, and no custumers so i walked out. ali baba was good so best to go after ramadan when they are operating properly. there is another iraqi guy in my group from teh states so have to find out where in daegu he ended up

so sunday i decided to try to take the bus into the town itself. i know they have express buses so decided to try that out. express bus 3 runs down the north/south road i tried walking down on saturday. it went right into the town centre where the pedestrianized area is. lots of shops and feels like a european city centre. clothing stores, restaurants, bars, street musicians. although it is pedestrianized a car will decide to drive down and knock a few people so be careful. lots of foreigners there so no feelings of isolatoin

so i ate a pizza restaurant for $15, again, what we would call a medium back home. then i found a dollar store and picked up all my bathroom/kithchen supplies i needed for $10.50, like a mop and sponge to bleach the bathroom proper. i might just buy my own toilet seat now as this landlord is useless. if you can find a dollar store its much better deal than homeplus. only thing i need is clothes drying rack for laundry which is $60 in homeplus, so is a mattress pad! i wanted to buy moth balls so i started to eat my shirt to show the lady!

to get the different express bus back made my way to daegu train station. there is a tourist info booth where she tried to help, but bus maps do not exist in either language. also figured out how to top up my bus card the last guy left behind. the machine only takes 1000 bills ($1) as i was trying to put in 10,000 ($10). also to cross the road to get to daugu station i went underground and found an east/west shopping mall running for 1 km each way.

express bus 2 is actually much nicer route winding thru the mountains instead of the north south road to chilgok so you see more greenery in the valleys. really reminds me of germany with the tower blocks in the green hills. it ends a good 10 min walk from tesco, i live the other side so about a 20 min walk for me.

downtown chilgok is nice with a shoping mall, brand name stores, baskin robbins, dunkin donuts, etc. just depressing walking from where the bus let off, thru the new nicer part of chilgok, across to the older part where i am. i will see what i can do about my apartmetn but not holding my breath (except for the stench from the drains). i've put enough effort into cleaning and unpacking i'd rather just stay if changing is such a big issue, but will insist they do not put someone here next year and let me pick their apartment when i leave

tomorrow start my first classes....