my apartment!

at long last.... pics of my new apartment! (please dont scream...) =P

first, just to demonstrate how much unbelievable cleaning i did when i first moved in, and particularly how much grease was layering over everything, please see Exhibit A:

Exhibit A: the before picture

Exhibit B: the after picture. That was about 30 minutes later of scrubbing.

The building. I'm on the 2nd floor, the one closest in this picture.

Can you tell how painful this hill is to walk up everyday? Needless to say, it's unpleasant.

The view from the stairs. Mine's the closest door.

The view from my balcony (eastward)

The view from my balcony (westward). That building you see is where i theoretically play badminton every week.

My showeroom before its much needed paint job. This is what i call "prison style."

Another wall of the showeroom before painting

During painting...

Only the ceiling left to go...

My now beautiful (and bright) showeroom!

What's this? you say. So Toyota-san, a godsend, was helping me the first 3 days i moved in to massively clean the place. in the process, though, she knocked off this clip that held up my drying rack. being the master ghetto-rigger i am, i taped 3 pairs of disposable chopsticks together then taped them to the wall. my shelf has been sturdy and happy ever since =)

the view from my front door

my kitchen

more kitchen

oh how glorious it is to have more than 2 shelves for all my dishes and cups!

kitchen \ bedroom

my cozy bedroom...

surprisingly, i still have roughly the same about of storage space as at my old place

the bedroom view from the kitchen

i dont know whether to shoot or hug the architect sometimes. i would definitely hug him for this: that white wall houses my dishes and cups on the kitchen side, and on the lower portion, is a shoe closet accessible from the front door side. brilliant, no?!

my freshly repainted showeroom =)

my bathtub and the annoyingly complicated highly explosive propane-powered shower. i literally laughed in the face of the guy who showed me how to use it. you would not believe how much effort it takes to get hot water.

my ghetto toilet... notice anything missing? and yes, it came like that.

this is why i would shoot the architect: notice the door jamb that runs along the leftside of the picture. that door is between the showeroom (duh) and the kitchen. then, point your attention to the direction the toiletroom door slides. yup. that's right. i have to enter my wet showeroom in order to access the toilet. it's not as annoying anymore, but definitely took some getting used to.

as you can probably tell, this place isn't very big, but i have to admit, i like it a lot better than my old place. first of all, i can just roll and reach just about everything in my apartment. i have a ton of shelves to put dishes, which is excellent, and this place is just big enough to fit everything i have. there have been less bugs than my old places (although the mosquitoes still magically get inside, and the geckos run larger here). but at least i dont have to climb up and down stairs to pee or run upstairs to answer the phone. also, i can cook and watch tv at the same time, and even use the computer while still keeping an eye on the stove. and did i mention i went from having the most expensive rent of all us ALTs to having one of the cheapest? hell YAY-AH! =D

in other news, it's official: the new ALTs have been decided, and they'll be coming at the end of July/beginning of August. and guess what: i'm going to be the only girl next year! what a loss for this island. tsushima has apparently suffered some bad experiences with past females. they're under the impression that us females can't handle the extreme ruralness (which is crap), so they decided, let's go for guys. *shaking head*. i really hope everything turns out okay. luckily, i still have Sujin, the Korean CIR, who is living next door to me. at least i have one person i can girl talk with *phew*

i have more pics to upload, but i think i'm going to save that for tomorrow. hope you all got a good laugh out of my apartment pics! =)