New Neighbors

Living in an apartment complex always brings people moving in and moving out. Back in the States, it seemed the big moving day was the last day of the month. Here in Korea, it is anytime of the month. I noticed one day this past week that the laundry room would darken and lighten quickly. When I finally went to see what was happening I saw the lift. It goes pretty fast so it was hard to capture on camera. We got new neighbors above us.

I'm kinda sad because there were a couple of young kids living there. Often late at night, sometimes after midnight, they would come home and thump, thump, thump around the apartment. My Korean girlfriend was over once when that happened and she was surprised that we weren't upset by the noise. I told her I felt sorry that the kids were getting home so late at night (many nights were school nights) and I'm sure they had energy to burn off. I just wish I had a tenth of the energy they had. I never met them but I will miss them.


One of the good things about new and old neighbors is that they tend to throw out junk while moving. I found this Korean traditional drum in the garbage this week Curt (hubby) thinks it is junk and I should throw it back out. I think it just needs some TLC like getting the wooden center aligned and some scrubbing to clean it up.

It is really ironic because just this week I stopped by a drum store that sells this type of drum, along with drums with beautiful painting on the sides. The store is on my way to chilbo class and I dropped in one day. The cost of this exact drum there was 300,000WON ($300 US). I thought this was expensive but I told Curt that I saved us a ton of money. Then he came home from work and I said, "Look, honey, what I found in the garbage." He was not as excited as I was and still looks at it with disdain. Well I'm happy anyway!