more apartment searching.... not fun

It is never fun to go apartment hunting. It is especially not fun when you cannot find any resources in English to help you along the way and must wander from the subway stop hoping to find a realty place that will not immediately shoo you away as soon as you walk in the door because you are a foreigner. *sigh* My job is in northern Seoul and Al's new job is in the northwest, technically outside of Seoul in the countryside (but still on the subway line). We randomly picked a few subway stops in between and started looking around. The first two stops were ok, decent city areas with lots of places to eat and shop but the next two were "countryside" stops- they basically took you back 50 years. It was the first place I've been to in Korea that reminded me of some parts of China. Just old, dirty, crumbly, and chaotic. Although the location wasn't ideal, for the reasons listed above, we still wanted to check it out- hoping we can get a bigger place for a good price. We were sidetracked by an 81 year old man (he mentioned his age repeatedly) who was thrilled we were in his part of town and wanted to buy us coffee. "No" did not seem to be an option so we hung out for a bit. His children moved to New York 30 years ago, so he was excited to talk to me about that. I notice when we interact with older Koreans as a couple that they mostly talk to him and inderectly ask me questions through him-- "Is your girlfriend also from New Zealand?" "Where does she work?" It's funny. Anyway, we finaly made it to some realtors there but found the prices to be about the same. It's just as well, we were definitely conspicuous in that area and I would prefer to live in a place where I don't receive quite so much attention.

More searching next week. Wish us luck!