greetings from the new house!

Well, last week the mould really hit the fan so to speak. I got home from the Ty-poon party to find a dead cockroach on the floor next to the toaster. This was not usual in itself- happens a lot in my gaff. The difference was that this little fella was over an inch long. Tim made me take it to work with me on Monday to show Mr Kim. It was time to take the kid gloves off and get down to serious battles about moving. So I tried not to think too hard about what I had in the bag in my hand and went in to see Mr Kim. When the dead bug seemed not to register on his radar I pulled out the final trick in my bag of female ammunition and promptly burst into tears. Seemed to work as five days later I was moving house.

The new place is mercifully mould free (so far) and the only living creatures that I have seen (apart from my reflection in the mirror) so far are the goldfish that I brought with me. So everything seems a lot better right now. The new place is tricky to find though. The old place was near the MBC TV studio so a great landmark for taxi drivers and well wishers. This new place seems to be near nowhere of any consequence. I walked downtown on Saturday- having very carefully written the address down off an envelope I borrowed out of one of the mailboxes- which was easy enough (there is a mountain just behind the downtown area is pretty tricky to ignore really) but getting back was where all the fun lay. Fortunately for me it turned out that the taxi driver who picked me up had been the guy to shuttle us between bars the night before and he had enjoyed our repetitive but sincere rendition of all the Korean soccer chants we could remember. And he was determined to find my house and get me home. He stopped people all over the place and CBed control to find it and even turned the meter off. When I finally saw it in the distance we were both very excited and when I got out he refused to take any money! What a nice man. He also wrote down how to get there for me to show to other taxi drivers and so far it seems to have worked!

There was another party last weekend to mark the birthday of our favourite Kiwi bloke in town- he of the famous bug in his ear story from the World Cup days. We moved down to the soju tent after the building caretaker had come up to complain for the third time (one up on the week before when the girls took care of the police by offering them birthday cake which they were only too pleased to accept!). Though we then got thrown out of the tent for singing too loudly in the rain. Which was a shame as I really wanted to drink in that soju tent as it is called Hiddink after the new Korean folk hero of the World Cup.

And that is all I have to say I think. Ceramic festival the other week has left me with more soju cups and kimchi pots than I know what to do with but apart from that I was gratified to find that I could fit most of my stuff into the two bags that I had brought with me- weight off my mind for the return journey at some stage.
farewell for now,
yours a mould-free Hels
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