Apartment

It occurred to me that I never really said anything yet about our apartment. It's a rather large studio, but not square so it feels like two rooms. It was built in February, and has a keypad entry for both the front and apartment doors. The stairway and halls are very nice, with marble tile floors and trendy wallpaper panels on the ceilings. The lights are motion censored in the hallways and at the keypad out front.

Welcome!

This is the first thing you see when you walk in our front door, although the cabinets are usually closed. You can see all of the room we left for our guests' shoes if they come over...

This is our room as you see it when you step up from the entryway into the main room. It's changed a bit since I took these pictures about a month ago, but it's kind of in a constant state of change at the moment. We now have a desk for the computer (pictured here on our small dining table next to the bed), and that table is in the center of the room with two brown suede chairs (no legs, floor seating style).

Here's another angle. Outside of those doors is a room for the water heater and a tiled floor with a drain so we can hang clothes to dry. It has also become the storage room for our laundry hamper, suitcases, various boxes, and the basil we've been growing (thanks to our friend Erin here for the seeds). It may be cluttered, but it smells like bruschetta so that's alright with me.

Flipping around now, you can see the other side of the apartment. The two big white doors mark our closet, which is heavenly. Inside, in addition to the hanging room there are two long drawers at the bottom for storage. And then you see our kitchen to the right of it.

It's a pretty standard kitchen- a wonderful size. And then you notice the washing machine.

It's in the kitchen, under the stove top; right where you would expect to see a stove. It's a large drum, without an agitator, which is very nice. The only problem we faced when we first used it was figuring out the settings. This is what came out after trying the dictionary, under the column translated to be Spin Dry (from top to bottom):

- river

- Buddhist monk

- medicine

- spin dry + (unknown)

- drainage + (unknown) + dance

We stopped trying to translate at this point, and have switched instead to random trial. It all tends to come out pretty much the same.

Through the kitchen is the door to the bathroom. Yes- the whole room is our shower. It's very space efficient and you get used to working around the sink and toilet pretty fast.

Perhaps one of the best features of the apartment is the roof. The stairs go up one more floor and lead to a door to the roof. It's like an outdoor room. Nobody goes up there, and it's walled with the same marble tiles in the hallway interior covering the ledges. The floor of it has been painted green, which was fun at first because the sun baked it to make little bubbles that popped like bubble wrap wherever you walked. It offers some great views.

To the right...

...and left. This was when we first moved in and the cherry blossoms and those yellow flowery bushes were in bloom. It's all very green now. To the left of the road is a long strip of exercise/sports park, just beyond that is the river that leads down through the mountains and to the dam.

I love our apartment.