Slopping and Shopping- The Story of How One Can Furnish Their Korean Apartment Without Opening Their Wallet

Ohhh we had a problem on our hands...



In April we moved from my tinny shoe box apartment to a much larger (but not as big as big as our apartment in Canada) apartment. We were filled with such joy & happiness that we were finally moving to a much more livable space. A place where one could do yoga without touching all walls, a place that you could actually have company come over, a place with more than just once small room posing as whole apartment, and most importantly, a place that truly felt like home.



Moving was, in and of itself, a strange experience. A near-midget sized, chain smoking, sixty year old Korean man woke Alissa and I up as he knocked on our apartment door one hour earlier than what we were told. Alissa and I were barely awake as we witnessed this short stalky, rugged man who could not speak a sniff of English just barge in and start throwing our boxes of carefully packed (and sometimes fragile) items into the back of his circa 1980s beater 1/4 ton Hyundai truck. This man carried himself more like a garbage man with home time on his mind than a mover, he wasted no time and didn't even hesitate to lift even then fridge on his hunched back. With lit smoke dangling between chapped lips he didn't even hesitate to whip it out and piss in our toilet in clear sight of Alissa and I, the bathroom door wide open as if it did not even exist.





When everything was said and done, Alissa, the midget mover, the directors of our school, and I stared at the new apartment. It had quite the opposite feel of the place we just moved from. Although everything we had from our old apartment was moved into our new pad, it still felt empty. Our old place was so small that there was literally no room for anything- a bed, a fridge, a desk, a dresser, and a washing machine-the essentials- was all that could be packed into that little place. These items barely demanded any space in our new place. As I offered the small old man a coke, I couldn't help but feel that our apartment needed a little something more before it could truly be called a home. The old man smiled.




This is the problem that a lot of English teachers face in Korea...



The contracts that we sign clearly state that we will be offered a fully furnished apartment but when you get here often one sometimes finds that 'fully furnished' actually means 'barley furnished'.



It's difficult for anyone to justify buying all new furniture for only a year stay- that's so completely wasteful.



How do foreign English teachers deal with such a problem...



They DUMPSTER DIVE.



The bums in Regina do it. Our friends in Korea do it. And, of course, Alissa and I do it. Alissa and I would even go as far as saying that its our new hobby. I bet you'd be hard pressed to see me pass a trash heap (that are piled up in front of every telephone pole in Korea) without giving it a little look-see.

I see myself as a noble pioneer, an environmental crusader with reusing in the forefront of my mind. In fact all of the furniture that adorns our new house is from the stinky trash heaps that are such an eyesore to some.

Remember Kids... REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE.