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I'm sitting down to a steaming bowl of rice and veggies and a tall glass of chilled green tea and I figure it is time to write about my new apartment. Two other teachers and I are living on the 5th floor of the Vision Center. It is just up the hill from Life International School where we teach. There are six floors, the sixth being a roof completely littered with debris; but it's a great place to catch the sunset and look out over town.

Our apartment has two rooms, two bathrooms and a nice large living/kitchen area. Honestly, it feels like home already. There are just a few things I've had to get used to.

We don't have hot water, so showers at night can be a little uncomfortable at first. The strange thing about the showers is that there really isn't a "shower" at all; it's just a sprayer on the wall in the bathroom. All of the bathrooms have drains, so you pretty much just shower and the water goes all over your bathroom floor. It seems that you would always have a clean bathroom floor cause you're constantly showering all over it but that's not really the case... The floors are uneven so the water pools on the floor instead of going down the drain. Then you walk over your floor with your feet that are covered in the day's dust and well, it equals a really dirty bathroom floor. Since I'm not too much of a neat freak it doesn't keep me up at night, but I do mop.

Sooo on to the lizards. The little guys are everywhere. I'm not the type of girl that screams at bugs, or even spiders, but for some reason these tan colored lizards freak me out. I never know where they are going to be; I had one in my fridge in the first room I stayed in and encountered many of the little guys when I was rearranging my classroom. Whenever I move something I brace myself. Today, I heard a really loud croaking sound in the corner of our kitchen. Megan informed me that there are giant lizards, who in fact, make that very same croaking sound. Guess there are always bigger fish to fry, or in this case, larger lizards to worry about...

                                                                                          One of the backyard crocodiles

I mention the showers and lizards because I find them comical, but really I love living here. I enjoy waking up in the morning to the sun softly lighting my room from the kitchen window. I like the cool floors and our recently purchased bamboo furniture. I love the fact that I can see the top of a temple that's on the hill above us and I even like coming home to fishy Korean food cooking down the hall. It's all so foreign, but somehow it feels familiar.