Our Very Own Apartment

Believe it or not, today actually marks our 1-year anniversary of teaching in Busan.  But, since we are on 13-month contracts, we can't yet celebrate our contract completion until next month.  However, I can tell you that we've been out of the USA for a total of 533 days, or about 17 1/2 months.  That's hard to believe!

Well, as I've said in an earlier post, this new contract period is bringing a lot of changes to me and Zach.  First, we will be changing schools.  We will no longer be teaching middle school boys.  We will, starting at the end of August, be teaching in elementary schools with both boys and girls.  We found out the names and locations of our schools earlier this week.  Zach will teach at Changjin Elementary School and I will teach at Samduk Elementary School.  Our schools are very close to each other.  In fact, we are only one subway stop away from each other!  We can commute together - at least in the mornings.

Another big change is that we are moving.  In fact, I signed our lease today and we can start moving tomorrow.  We technically don't have to be out of our current apartment until August 26th, so that gives us plenty of time to move.

You may be a bit curious as to how we went about finding an apartment, so I will try to explain it to you, briefly.  Some friends of ours actually moved into their own apartment this last February so they were able to give us some great advice.  One of them actually went with me to look at apartments.  To look at apartments, you don't need to make an appointment.  There are realtors on every corner, especially if there are many apartment buildings in the area.  We just popped our heads in and asked if they spoke English.  Most spoke enough where we could get buy.  We saw a total of 9 apartments on Tuesday.

To rent an apartment, you need a down payment or what they call key money.  The average amount for key money (at least in the buildings we looked at) is 5,000,000 Won (~$5,000.00).  The more key money you put down, the cheaper your rent is every month.  To secure the apartment you want, you need to put down the key money as soon as possible.

While looking at the 9 apartments, I took video so Zach could see them too.  I narrowed my favorites list to 3 apartments.  When Zach got off work, we looked at my favorites.  We chose our apartment the same day and transferred our key money the next day.  Today, I went in and signed the contract and paid for our first-month's rent.  Since we have Supper Club/celebrating birthdays/saying goodbyes tonight, we won't start moving until tomorrow (Saturday).

If you have any specific questions about the process of renting an apartment in Korea, just post it in the comments section or shoot me an e-mail.

Also, if you want our new address and I haven't already sent it to you, just ask!