One of the drawbacks to working in rural Jeollanam-do.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Isn't working in rural Jeollanam-do drawback enough?" HAHAHAHA, good one.



I lived in a town of 16,000 for a year, and travelled twice a week to communities of a few hundred. I had some, uh, hiccups in my housing situation as I mentioned before, and was quite happy to move into an apartment in Suncheon with an indoor bathroom and hot water available every day. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to keep my places in Gangjin clean, but eventually had to learn to tolerate the rats that lived in the ceiling. I never had anything like this, though:

I’ve been living in this place since early August, but never really moved in, since I was told I would only be here for a few months. It’s really gross - there’s only one working light, there’s bugs (including centipedes) everywhere, there’s a huge mold problem (as seen above), and they’re building a new building about 50 feet from my window and start work on it at 6am. I like being even further into the countryside (my current village has fewer than 100 people, I’d estimate), but this house is….gross.

Go visit Waygook Next Door for a couple of photos. My first place in Gangjin was pretty messy when I moved in, but I think I'd be out like a boner in sweat pants if I were forced to live in a place like that. Speaking of boners, my first place had a ceiling light that would turn red if you pulled the strong. In spite of what that implied, nobody ever came around to give me a massage, nor I them.



While some apartments or houses are substandard, most are pretty ordinary, and of a satisfactory size for a young single man or woman. Then again sometimes you can do pretty well for yourself, as in one woman who got a two-bedroom apartment in Naju. That's one reason I inquired about the job before I came to Suncheon. Yep, the same foreign language high school Christopher Paul Neil applied to.