Friday was the start of an 11-day fireworks festival here in Pohang. The biggest event was a fireworks competition on Satuday night. Teams from China, Poland, and Italy competed. It was pretty cool to watch, but we weren't quite in an ideal area. Well, we were in a great spot to watch, but we weren't near any speakers, so I couldn't tell if the fain music we heard was to go with the fireworks. We stayed for Poland and China, and decided to leave after that, so that we could get a taxi or bus home and beat the crowd (I'd estimate that there was between 10-20,000 people there...like I said, a huge event). I'll see what I can do about uploading some video i took from my wife's iPhone, but that may not be till the end of the week.
In other news, we looked at a few apartments this weekend and found two that we liked. The first one we like was really nice, in a great area (surrounded by good restaurants and shops), had a second floor, and an oven (seriously, that's a huge plus for me, in the 4+ years I've lived in Korea, I've yet to have a true oven....the closest I have is a toaster oven that can barely fit a loaf pan). The downsides- said second floor has a REALLY steep staircase...actually, I think it would be better classified as a ladder, the apartment itself is on the fourth floor with no elevator (not ideal for the wife for when she would have to take the twins somewhere, especially in the first year), and is a bit out of our price range (₩120,000,000...roughly $100,000).
Side note on housing in Korea. It's really expensive. There are basically three ways to get apartments-mei mei (buy), jeonsei (one lump-sum rental fee, generally for a one or two-year contact, but, as far as I know, as long as you stay, you don't have to pay again...it's also kind of a deposit fee, as you get it all back when you move out), and wolsei (monthly payments plus a deposit that's maybe half of a jeonsei). We are currently at a wolsei, but the apartments we looked at we're jeonsei.
The last apartment we looked at we also really liked. It is in a quiet neighborhood, on the second floor, close to my office, and one of my co-workers (who's wife just had a baby at the beginning of this month) lives in the same building. It is also wight next to a beautiful park and is ₩20,000,000 cheaper. The only bad this are it needs a new sink (which the owner will be taking care of before we move in), new flooring and wallpaper (and in Korea, wallpaper goes on the ceiling, as well), and doesn't really have any nearby restaurants or shops.
Both of the apartments were around 1000 sq ft (our current one is about 640sq ft), so that will be a nice step up. DW's gonna be signing the papers for the cheaper one today, and we'll be moving at the end of October.
Well played!
