spring in hagye-dong

spring sprung

April, how did you get here?!  famous Aprils???  the only one I can think of is April the news reporter from teenage mutant ninja turtles.

I wake up before my alarm now, wunderbar.  I used to lazily laze away in bed until 8am, but these days 6:30 seems to be the time my internal alarm clock goes off and wide awake i am.  Or maybe, 6:30 is the time the sun makes its way through the filth/yellow dust lining my windows and wakes me up.  either way i love it.  not hearing my alarm go off is honestly the BEST thing ever.  ugh to alarm clocks.  i think alarms are  like number  8 on my hate list. well going up to number 2 when they are fire alarms/car alarms/north korea is bombing us alarms, but maybe like number 50 (as in i don't care at all) when it's just the monthly "just in case we are bombed" practice alarms.

if you squint you can see the dirt

It's a new year (my year starts in March just so you know) and I have moved from Amsa-Dong to Hagye -Dong in Northern Seoul.  It's nearly exactly where I want to be, close to bukhansan, suraksan and dobongsan. and look!! what's that outside the window?? why it's the hill i climb up and over to get to baramsan.  Just in case you haven't noticed I'm still obsessed with hiking.

Moving was a giant pain in the ass, actually everything from Feb till tomorrow was a huge pain in the ass. I left my old job with my old company.  I had to find a new job with a new company. Pretty straightforward right?  well not if you are a picky picky person.  I don't want to work in the morning (this is the time when i want to do EVERYTHING - such as blogging at 7am - and I don't feel like using this awesome energy on such horrible things, like work.) AND I don't want to work in the evening.

So basically I want to work from 1-5.  And for the past 2 years that hasn't been a problem.   but this year, well, it WAS a problem.  finding a job that offered those hours, with the bonus of decent pay and the accepted extras (housing, flight, bonus, pension, medical) was next to impossible.  As the job search continued, it seemed that well well, I was being a bit too picky (hogwash dear readers!) so finally i settled for a job  from 1-6:30 (with a one hour break, but still, i would rather go home at 5:30) with 95% of the extras. That 5 percent being housing allowance instead of housing.

FML

Now this could lead me into a HUGE diatribe on housing - finding housing - and moving into said housing in Seoul, but I'll keep it short.  Acquiring shelter should be easy, just walk into a real estate agent, go look at places and choose one!  easy, not likely.  I spent days looking at shitty shit holes that were in my "budget" (basically 500,000 per month).  So then i upped the ante to 600,000 a month and found a wonderful little officetel in Hagye.  Done and done right?!  Fuck that shit... back to real estate office where they want to charge me nearly 700,000 for the real estate agent fee!? after bursting into tears (my #1 stress tactic) and watching a yelling match ensue between fraudulent real estate assholes and new company manager, we get the fee down to 300,000. 

hagye dong, here i am.  a million apartments mirror image of each other, looked down upon by a giant mountain and lined by a busy river.  I'm enjoying it and my new gym, and I'm getting used to my new school. I'm enjoying waking up with the sun, writing a blog while i clean the toilet and bake squash (yup no joke) while listening to the bbc all before the hour of 8.