Room Sweet Room

I have been greatly blessed to be living in a house of luxury for three years: a four bedroom house -- I mean a REAL, free-standing house (rather uncommon in Seoul). Okay, technically, I only lived in the house for a little less than a year, but before that I lived in the same family's beautiful four bedroom apartment. I have relished having comfortable furniture, a bathtub, an oven, large refrigerator, American Maytag washer AND dryer (oh, how I will miss soft clothes that come our of a dryer!).

But all of this is soon to come to an end... my landlord's family will be returning from England in February and so it is that I am in need of a new abode.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Korean housing market, let me give you a brief lesson. What you need (not surprisingly) is money -- lots of it, in cash (ah, now there is the difficult part). Here's how it works. If you want to rent an apartment you need to pay the landlord a "cheonsae" or "key money;" the landlord then takes that money and invests it, allowing him/her to (hopefully) make a profit. There are advantages and disadvantage to this system. For the renter the positive side is that the larger the key money, the lesser the rent -- you may have to pay virtually nothing, or maybe a few hundred dollars at most. And, best of all, when you move the key money is returned to you (presumably so you can then go get another apartment elsewhere). The disadvantage is, as mentioned above, you need the cash up front.

Let me give you an example. A friend of mine has a two bedroom apartment with a living room kitchen and bath. The living room and one bedroom are roughly 10x10 (12x12 at the most) with the master bedroom slightly bigger and the kitchen half that size. The apartment is relatively new and thus clean and pleasant with a nice view out a large picture window. Now then, for that space he deposited the 60,0000,000 won -- approximately $64,000 -- and pays a monthly rent of about $400.

Now you see my dilemma!!

Although I would like to say that I have $60,000 sitting around that I could give to a landlord, such is not the case.

After a fair amount of searching, I found a decent ROOM that I can afford. Yes, that's right, a one room studio apartment. It is a little ironic, really. When I graduated from college in 1991 and moved to Idaho to teach at an elementary school I made less than $20,000/year. But I had a lovely house small farm house. Others may have mocked my "miniature mansion" but I loved that house. With my closest neighbor about 1 mile away, it was spacious, had a fireplace, lots of windows, bookshelves and closet space and even a 25 year old horse and occasional cows in the front yard. I wish I could have taken that home with me wherever I have lived in the world.
Even in New York living on student budget I had a relatively pleasant apartment with a large living room. But now, here I am, grateful that I found a new, very clean, one room apartment with a "veranda" (i.e. storage space with a washing machine). The best part is the veranda because it allows for a very large window facing south and no other apartments blocking the view. That is actually why I decided to take the place rather than keep looking around -- it is very rare to find this type of housing with a large window. It makes me feel as though the space is much larger than it really is!

And so, despite being rather humbled by the prospect of having to live in a 5th floor walk up studio, I truly am grateful to have found a bright, sunny apartment. Rather than "downsizing" or even worse, being "downwardly mobile" I like to think of this move as a way to simplify my life. (Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with all the paintings I have accumulated while living in a large house with lots of wall space. Oh well, that is a question for another day.)

Christmas Around the World

It's not every year one (at least one who was born and raised in the American west) gets to celebrate Christmas in China, eating Indian and Thai food (where the dominant religions are Hinduism and Buddhism, respectively) with a Korean/American family while playing with Legos from Denmark. But such was my experience in 2007.

I went to Shanghai December 20 to attend the First Annual International Council for Traditional Music -- Study Group for Musics of East Asia Conference (yeah, that's a mouthful, I know, but we ethnomusicologists think the longer, more complicated a title, the more erudite we are... must be our German background.) A good time was had by all, and although the "paper" I delivered was not perhaps my most profound work, it was fun. (Actually, I chose to call my presentation an "oral musing among colleagues," rather than a formal paper.) I compared the training processes and vocal production of five generations of p'ansori singers, based primarily on sound recordings. I'm sure you are sorry you missed it.

Most of all, you should be sorry you missed out on eating some of the best dim sum ever to be had.


After the conference was finished I was lucky enough to be able to spend the Christmas holiday with the Bang family: [Left to Right] Melanie, Ethan, Whitney, Tylor, Paul, and Nicole (sadly, Kera, the adorable miniature schnauzer, was unable to join us on the excursion to the museum).



It is always delightful to spend Christmas with children -- so much excitement and many more gifts, even if they are not all my own (although, Santa was gratefully able to find me, even in amidst a billion Chinese citizens)! And the food, oh the food! Melanie and Paul are both marvelous cooks and bakers and I indulged myself to the fullest -- perhaps enjoying the sugar cookies the most, as usual.

I also learned that the key to shopping in China is having a stubborn, but gracious, native on hand to do the bargaining for you -- makes things so much easier (and cheaper)!

And so it is that another Christmas has passed. I wish I could have been with my own family, but am grateful I have good friends all over the world willing to take me in and share their warmth and love with me.

And speaking of time passing..., I made it back to Korea in time for New Years, but that story will have to wait for another day...