back into the hovel we go

I'm happy that my current hosts, the hasuk adjumma and adjoshi, are so nice. They're bending over backward to help me out, which includes, thankfully, correcting my Korean when it goes wrong, as it so often does.

I needed a brick for one of my strange, floor-to-ceiling, spring-loaded shelf contraptions, and the adjoshi left for a sec and came back with a brick (byeok-dol, apparently-- literally a "wall-stone"). Perfect. I've paid my first month's rent, so at least that's settled.

One major frustration today (or yesterday, rather; it's now Tuesday as I write this): I haven't been paid by Min-sung's family in over a month. I'm usually paid about once a month, so this isn't a big deal, but the family's never been overdue before. Min-sung's dad has been in America the past couple of weeks, and he just got back on Sunday. Today (yesterday, rather) I had my usual Monday lesson with Min-sung and was hoping to get paid, but Dr. Kwon took ill today and had to be taken to the hospital for some sort of intestinal complaint. He's scheduled to remain in hospital for three evenings; not good. I like him a lot (his daughters, Min-sung's big sisters, are also rather yummy, but definitely Too Young For Yours Truly, as they're both undergrads) and hope he's going to be OK. I also feel like an asshole about wanting to be paid; I have a feeling Dr. Kwon didn't tell his wife to take care of matters while he was in the States.

Ah, well. We'll wait and see. I get a huge infusion of cash from the SWU job in the second week of June, so that ought to amortir l'impact of not getting fundage from my Apkujeong gig.

So now it's back into my cave I go. More shit to unpack and rearrange. The adjoshi was startled at how much I'd done yesterday, but I didn't think I did all that much. I might prevail on him and his wife to use their kitchen facilities to wash all my dishes and utensils. They're pretty skanky right now. The dishes and utensils, I mean.

Bad points about my new place:

1. Space. There is no final frontier. A single glance was all I needed to explore the place thoroughly.

2. Lack of private facilities, though this isn't as bad as all that. Could be worse.

3. No air conditioning.

4. A view that's at street level. I get to see people's feet as they're walking by.

5. Noisy college students, goddammit.

6. Jackhammers.

Good points:

1. I'll be able to get DSL within a week, I do believe.

2. A tighter mesh on the single window (which also features BARS!-- cloister indeed) means no fucking mosquitoes or biting gnats. Hell, yeah.

3. A single price for rent means I can crank up my fan and not worry about being billed for electricity.

4. An open rooftop. Might start sitting ch'am-seon up there in the mornings, if I can drag my sorry ass out of bed at a decent hour. A big, big if. OK, ignore #4.

5. Very nice hosts, who this evening offered to make me a special dinner even though I'd come back to the hasuk well after dinnertime.

All right-- off to do a bit of work, then sleep the sleep of the damned.

_